Considering Navan alternatives?
Navan and Payhawk solve travel from different starting points. With Payhawk, travel is part of the same platform as cards, expenses, and AP - one login, one workflow, one source of truth.
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Why teams switch from Navan
When approval happens after the booking is confirmed, it's not really approval - it's a cancellation window. By the time the booking lands in a system, the cost is locked in - and Finance is the last to know.
Bookings happen in the travel platform. Receipts and expenses get filed somewhere else. At month-end, someone has to stitch them back together - and that someone is usually Finance.
Most teams are already juggling cards, expenses, and AP across too many systems. Another travel platform means another contract, another integration, another login - and another reconciliation loop to maintain.
What matters when choosing a travel platform
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Reactive finance is expensive. Budget surprises, policy exceptions, and slow closes all trace back to one thing: seeing travel spend after it's happened. Upfront visibility changes the economics of the whole function.
At scale, a travel tool that works isn't enough. It needs to stay connected to how Finance actually operates - approvals, ERP sync, cost centres, multi-entity complexity. Bolt-on integrations tend to break exactly when you need them most.
A monthly invoice tells you what happened. Real-time visibility tells you what's happening - against budgets, cost centres, and forecasts. Finance stays ahead of travel spend, not behind it.
A travel tool only works if people use it. That means booking that fits into the way employees already work, AI that remembers their preferences, and policy applied in the background - not a rulebook to memorise. The harder a tool is to adopt, the more bookings end up happening outside it.
How Payhawk supports more complex teams
AI Agents handle finance tasks with precision, so your team spends less time on routine work.
Dedicated IBANs, PSD2-compliant fund safeguarding, and seamless payments in 115+ currencies.
Visa debit and credit cards with proactive spend controls, auto-receipt capture, and real-time reporting.
Digitised spend tracking, expense reports with custom approvals, and direct reimbursements.
Smart travel booking with embedded payments and guided workflows from request to report.
Multi-level approvals, seamless matching, and global invoice payments—end-to-end AP made easy.
Simple purchasing your teams understand: clear requests, tailored workflows, POs, 3-way matching, and payments.
Integrations with ERP, accounting, HRIS, and security tools, plus a robust API and real-time webhooks.
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"It used to be a mini project to book a flight and a hotel. It took over one hour and a lot of back and forth with other stakeholders. I booked something yesterday with the AI travel agent, and it took just 4 minutes. So the difference is huge!"
Is Payhawk right for you?
Get clarity on your next step
Talk to a Payhawk expert about your setup, your challenges, and what a unified travel and spend platform looks like in practice.
FAQ
Navan is built around the traveller experience. Payhawk is built around Finance control. The difference shows up in how approvals work, how spend flows into your ERP, and how travel fits into the rest of your finance stack - not as a separate tool, but as part of the same platform Finance already runs.
Every trip goes through an approval workflow set by you before the booking is confirmed. Policy is enforced at the point of request - out-of-policy options are flagged instantly, and nothing is booked until the right person approves.
Every approved trip is funded through a Payhawk card, invoiced automatically at booking (for flights and pre-paid hotels), and grouped into a trip report that syncs directly to your ERP. Travel stops being the messiest spend category at month-end and becomes just another clean, reconciled flow.
No. Payhawk doesn't add markups on fares. What you see is what you pay - the same price available on the market, with the control and reconciliation built in.
Payhawk Travel is built into the platform - there's no separate implementation track. Your travel policy, approval workflows, and card funding are configured in the same place as the rest of your spend controls.
Payhawk is built for businesses with significant European operations - multi-entity, multi-currency, and cross-border spend are core to the platform. If your business operates across multiple European entities, that depth is available from day one.
Travellers describe the trip in plain language ("I need to be in Berlin Tuesday through Thursday") and Payhawk's AI Travel Agent surfaces in-policy flight and hotel options in seconds. There's no separate platform to log into, no policy lookup, and no expense report to file afterwards.
Payhawk doesn't replace travel managers - it removes the manual work that gets in their way. Policy enforcement, exception handling, and routine approvals happen automatically, so travel managers can focus on negotiating rates, supporting complex itineraries, and the parts of the role that actually need a human.