Clara Announces Launch of VCN in Partnership with Mastercard and Bee2Pay

Aiming to bring advanced payment technology beyond the travel industry, the fintech expects to process BRL 1 billion with the method in its first year.

São Paulo, July 16, 2024 - Clara, Latin America’s leading solution for companies to make and manage their payments, announces a new product designed specifically for the needs of companies with a large payment flow, whether travel agencies, hospitality businesses or large enterprises. It is the VCN (Virtual Card Number), a technology that randomly generates unique sets of digits for specific transactions or merchants. The launch reaches the market as a result of a partnership between Clara, Mastercard and Bee2Pay, and its main differentiator is agility combined with the intelligence and security it provides users.

In Brazil, the corporate travel market moved nearly BRL 120 billion in 2023, according to a survey by Fecomercio in partnership with Alagev. Clara, whose clients include some of Brazil’s leading travel companies, expects to capture a share of that market with the launch, which stems from a demand from its own users, and to go further by bringing the technology to large companies in other segments in the near future. The expectation is to reach BRL 1 billion in transactions made with the VCN in the first year.

To that end, the new feature offers unique advantages, such as simplifying users’ purchasing flows through specific, one-off or recurring payments. With it, companies can generate hundreds of cards, each for a ticket, hotel reservation, car rental or any other cost.

The possibilities are endless: an agency hired to make all reservations for a sales convention, for example, can create a credit card for each purchase automatically. If 30 employees need a ticket, hotel reservation and car rental, 90 cards with a pre-established limit will be issued and linked to the purchase order, making expense management and accounting easier.

Soon, as the product evolves, a large company will also be able to pay a long list of suppliers while organizing an event and ensure that transactions are tracked in real time by finance managers, since VCN technology allows integration with the market’s leading ERPs.

Another major advantage of this new way of paying is security: because they are temporary, randomly generated and have their data sent directly to merchants, cards issued with this technology cannot be used for unauthorized transactions on the main account and are not susceptible to cloning. This significantly reduces the risk of fraud. The technology also reduces the chance of manual errors and speeds up invoice processing, so payments are approved faster and cash flow is healthier.

“The demand for this technology came from our users, who already benefited from our credit card and digital account, as well as our platform for full control and visibility of payments. With this launch, we believe more transactions will be made through Clara, which brings us even closer to our ambition of having companies concentrate all their payments with us,” summarizes Francisco Simon, Country Manager of Clara in Brazil.

To make the new product possible, Clara relied on Mastercard’s In Control technology, already a partner for card transaction processing, and on Bee2Pay, a company in the Omnibees group, one of the most traditional players in the travel segment.

The new product reaches the market to bring greater efficiency to a growing number of companies, in a context where Clara already has more than 4,000 clients in Brazil and, in 2023 alone, processed BRL 1 billion. The expectation is to double that figure in 2024.

About Clara

Clara is Latin America’s leading solution for companies to make and manage all their payments. Clara’s platform includes corporate credit card issuance, bill payments and international transactions, and proprietary real-time expense management software. Founded in 2021, it operates in Brazil, Colombia and Mexico. As a Latin American multinational, Clara has secured investments from some of the region’s most strategic VCs, including Monashees, Kaszek and Canary, as well as global investors such as Notable Capital, Coatue, DST Global Partners, ICONIQ Growth, General Catalyst and Goldman Sachs.

Clara’s purpose is to empower companies to operate with agility and clarity, helping them become more efficient and less bureaucratic through a platform that brings together multiple payment methods integrated into its innovative expense management solution.

To learn more about Clara’s products and solutions, visit clara.com.