Business travel expense reports make for an interesting snapshot of more general consumer spending trends or how quickly digital brands have won hearts and share of wallet.
The wide acceptance of ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft is one example as are food apps such as that of Starbucks, which appears as one of the most expensed brands.
Certify’s latest report on the most common business and business travel expenses during 2018 reveals the dominance of digital brands such as the aforementioned brands as well as Amazon.
The SpendSmart Year in Review report shows Amazon, Lyft and Uber taking three out of the top six slots of the most expensed brands by North American companies.
Uber was the most expensed brand for the third consecutive year making up 11% of all expensed brands.
Lyft entered the top 10 list for the first time in 2018i with almost 3% of transactions while Starbucks is at number two with just over 4% of transactions.
The report is based on more than 50 million expenses and $3.3 billion in expense claims across Certify’s customers in North America.
Meals remains the most expensed category overall with more than 17% of all transactions but it is the digital brands such as Grubhub and Uber Eats, that are gaining momentum.
Certify says the food delivery category grew 118% from 2017 to 2018.
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The reliance on ride-hailing services Uber and Lyft is revealed by the increase in adoption from 2015 when they accounted for less than 50% of ride-hailing transactions compared to 92% in 2018.
Those services were neck and neck with traditional taxi firms around the first quarter of 2015 but had taken a 34% share by the third quarter of that year, compared with 22% for taxis and 44% for car rentals.
Airlines also took four of the top slots in the Certify 2018 report.