How Payhawk helped us become a cashless business
Luxair is the flag carrier airline of Luxembourg with its headquarters and hub at Luxembourg Airport. With destinations across Europe, North Africa, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East, it's Luxembourg’s only passenger-carrying airline offering regular, non-charter service.
HQ
Industry
Employees
Started using Payhawk
Luxair's Payhawk experience in numbers:
Since adopting Payhawk, Luxair has achieved impressive results:
- +80 manual cash registers eliminated, removing paper-based processes across 40 destinations
- 100% digitised approvals, replacing scanned signatures and emails with in-app workflows
- 0 out-of-pocket expenses for employees thanks to smart corporate card rollout
- 3 days to issue new company cards and empower staff across the business
- 100% digitised approvals, replacing scanned signatures and emails with in-app workflows
- 0% paper chasing and complete control over budgets, with real-time card limit changes and instant fund approvals
“The Payhawk App helps keep us agile, as even employees without company cards can submit out-of-pocket business expenses in seconds. And those with cards? The employee simply sends a request through the Payhawk App for additional funds, including an explanation, and I can approve it instantly."
Life before Payhawk
Before moving to Payhawk, Luxair employees had to pay for all their business-related expenses from their personal bank accounts. Then, all receipts had to be attached to a handmade expense order, copied twice, and sent to the HR department to be reimbursed. It was a slow process, and the airline wanted to improve it.
Also, at this point, Luxair didn’t have a central or digital overview of company spend. They couldn’t see what the company was spending per category or guide. And data mining was cumbersome. The approval process was manual, too, requiring an approver’s signature via a scanned document or email.
Tineke Van Maerken, VP of Finance at Luxair, says:
Before switching to Payhawk, we used manual cash registers for our tour guides across 40 destinations. The tour guides then each submitted an Excel cash register with scanned ticket copies every month. The accounting team then had to manually enter all of the information in the accounting system based on a paper scan of over 80 cash registers. It was very time-intensive!
The Luxair team wanted to become cashless, control its spend more efficiently, and understand who was spending, how much, and where.
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Why Payhawk
The Luxair team decided to move to Payhawk for three main reasons.
Tineke explains, “First, the accessibility to fast credit card issuance. You can issue a card on the web platform, and cardholders will receive it in less than three days. Second, the user-friendly expense management app linked to corporate cards."
She continues:
Payhawk allows even employees without company cards to submit out-of-pocket business expenses to the app.
The team can now centrally manage the tour guides’ budgets with company card limits — and better control the business’s overall spending.
“Good governance leads us to having traceable expenses in each and every business,” Tineke says. The airline has real-time info on what it spends on its tour guides — and it successfully digitised its authorisation process. Plus, it can now create valuable expense reports automatically at the end of the month. “As an administrator, I can adapt the card limits instantaneously to suit the business needs. Every cardholder has a monthly limit, but if unexpected expenses occur they can request funds quickly via the app."
The employee simply sends a request for additional funds through the Payhawk app, including an explanation, and the finance team can instantly approve it (or even set a workflow to auto-approve it), empowering teams on the ground and saving hours.
Feeling empowered
Clearly, the finance team is very pleased with Payhawk. But what about the end-users? Tineke told us that after switching to Payhawk one of the employees fed the following back to her:
I feel totally empowered, and for sure, it’s a sign of trust from my employer. We received some training on how to use the cards and upload card receipts and other personal expenses. But the best thing of all is that I now have my own monthly budget!
Ready to learn more about becoming a cashless business like Luxair? Book a personalised demo and speak to one of our experts about taking control of processes and expenses.
