"Visa International has introduced a new specification that will dramatically increase a corporation's ability to automate business-to-business (B2B) purchasing functions and monitor travel and entertainment (T&E) expenses worldwide - both on the Internet and in the physical world. The new Visa Global Invoice Specification uses Extensible Markup Language (XML) to exchange invoice and payment data across industries and technical processing platforms. Implementation of the specification enables corporations to negotiate prices and control costs, as well as increase productivity by eliminating manual processes. It is being introduced to encourage its adoption as an open standard in the global commercial marketplace."
"The new Visa Global XML Invoice Specification was developed with Visa technology partners Commerce One, IBM, Sun Microsystems, Inc. and ValiCert, Inc. These partners provided Visa with an extensive review, validating Visa's efforts to use XML technology and supporting Visa's contribution to the buyer/supplier value chain of enhanced data. Visa is committed to promote the specification with software and system developers. With its use, corporate clients will have a standard way to process detailed information on procurement transactions, as well as T&E spending on airline travel, hotels and car rental. In the near future, Visa plans to expand the specification to support other merchant sectors including healthcare, maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) and fleet services. Visa International, with over 12 million Visa Purchasing, Visa Business and Visa Corporate cards in the global market, has seen 40% annual growth in the past three years and is the market leader within the procurement and purchasing card sector. The Visa Global XML Invoice Specification may be used by any system developer seeking a standard and interoperable definition for processing invoice data using XML. It provides a cross-industry, interoperable message format which enables processing of enhanced data across regions and industry sectors and, as clients identify new needs, it can easily be extended and adapted to support additional information needs. Visa has compiled a comprehensive list of data elements used in most invoices and has classified them into the following information areas: Buyer/Supplier, Shipping, Tax, Payment, Currency, Discount, and Line Item Detail. Visa can also deliver the XML invoice data across VisaNet, Visa's global network. As the growth of e-commerce has exploded, Visa is playing a leadership role in both the consumer and commercial B2B markets to establish common standards and platforms to promote the growth and ubiquity of powerful new payment channels. Examples of these efforts include: Open Platform; Common Electronic Purse Specification (CEPS); EMV (Europay, Mastercard, Visa) standard for chip, credit and debit cards; SET (Secure Electronic Transaction) and the new Visa Global Invoice Specification based on XML." The Visa Global XML Specification is available on the Visa web site.
"As clients identify new data needs, the Visa XML Invoice Specification may be extended to support additional data elements and industry segments. The current Visa XML Invoice Specification supports: (1) Line-item invoice detail for procurement (including Business-to-Business Electronic Commerce); (2) Airline and travel itinerary data; (3) Lodging information (including detailed expenses); (4) Car rental information (including detailed expenses), Future releases of the Visa XML Invoice Specification will support: (5) Health care; (6) Government; (7) Temporary services; (8) And others"
References:
VISA Invoice DTD version 1.0. 2000-01-14 Revision 1.0 Release Version. By Louise Hadley. See complete documentation in specification package.
Specification: Visa XML Invoice Implementation Guide. Visa Code Lists and Data Elements with sample DTD and Stylesheet in .pdf format. VXMLdoc.zip (717 KB).
Specification: General XML Invoice Implementation Guide. Code Lists and Data Elements with sample DTD and Stylesheet in .pdf format. GXMLdoc.zip (381 KB).
Specification: XML Invoice Technical Pack, Version 1.0. DTD, Stylesheet, and .xml examples. XMLTechPack.zip (22 KB).
[May 23, 2000] "Visa International and Concur Technologies Form Marketing Alliance to Deliver B2B E-Commerce Solutions to the Visa Commercial Marketplace. Combined With the World's Most Accepted Card, Concur Provides Companies With Workplace E-Commerce Solutions Allowing for Unprecedented Time and Cost Savings." - "Visa International, the leader in the global payments industry, and Concur Technologies Inc., a leading provider of business-to-business e-commerce solutions, today announced a marketing alliance to develop and implement payment-related products and services for the business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce and travel and entertainment (T&E) markets, providing unprecedented time and cost savings to companies of all sizes. Concur and Visa will work together to standardize and enhance electronic invoicing by implementing the Visa Global XML Invoice Specification (www.visa.com/xml) and Visa Commercial payment products within Concur Procurement and Concur Commerce Network. By doing so, Concur will electronically transmit enhanced data to Visa and its acquirers allowing businesses to receive invoice line item detail for all transactions performed using Visa Commercial products... ["The Visa Extensible Markup Language (XML) Invoice Specification provides a cross-industry, interoperable message format to enable processing of enhanced data across regions and industry sectors. As a result, Visa Commercial Card issuers and clients will be able to accept and process enhanced data through a growing number of systems and reporting packages. In e-business, XML is becoming the cross-platform data format standard. XML is an ubiquitous artery for inter-company transactions that link diverse platforms and legacy systems. Essentially, XML is the HTML of business systems. Just as all browsers can process HTML universally, business systems are being enabled to process XML data files. XML is replacing many specialized and proprietary formats as it allows for broad acceptance and expansion as needed..."] See "VISA XML Invoice Specification."
[February 09, 2000] "ValiCert Selected by Visa International to Build Foundation for New Global Standard for Electronic Invoices. XML Expertise and Commitment to Open Standards Cited as Primary Reasons for Choice." - "ValiCert, Inc., a leading provider of end-to-end, secure infrastructure solutions for e-Transactions, today revealed the pivotal role it played in developing the new Visa Global XML Invoice Specification, also announced today by Visa International. ValiCert was selected by Visa for this task because of its expertise in XML -- the extensible markup language that's quickly becoming the lingua franca of e-business -- and because of ValiCert's strong commitment to open standards for data exchange. Visa compiled a comprehensive list of data elements used in most invoices, and ValiCert applied its extensive background in XML development to take the lead in researching the state of the art and setting the initial direction and architecture of the document. ValiCert presented Visa with a design and a specification for an invoice in XML based on open industry standards, including the CommerceOne Common Business Library, and then engaged with Visa in lengthy design reviews. Today's announcement comes on the heels of ValiCert's participation with Visa in successfully launching the first digital receipts as founding members of the Digital Receipt Alliance."
