AI to Control $700 Billion in Corporate Travel Spend by 2028 as Agentic Purchasing Expands: Conferma

Corporate travel is rapidly emerging as the proving ground for agentic commerce, with artificial intelligence on track to manage or authorize 37% of all business travel spending globally by 2028.

According to new research from virtual card and payment infrastructure provider Conferma, that transition represents an estimated $700 billion in corporate expenditures directed by autonomous algorithms, benchmarked against Global Business Travel Association projections. The shift moves enterprise AI beyond conversational recommendations into direct financial agency, allowing software bots to compare fares, book flights, reserve hotel rooms, and execute checkout transactions without routine human hand-holding.

The Oversight Gap: Spending Power vs. Safety Rails Despite aggressive adoption targets, corporate governance is struggling to keep pace with algorithmic autonomy:

• The Adoption Curve: More than a quarter of surveyed organizations (28%) anticipate AI will command more than half their total travel budgets within two years.

• Universal Trepidation: A staggering 97% of respondents reported active concerns regarding autonomous purchasing, citing risks such as unauthorized upgrades, policy circumvention, and data exposure.

• Superficial Safeguards: While 81% of firms maintain basic travel policies or transaction caps, only 36% consider their existing security controls comprehensive enough for autonomous agents.

"Giving an AI agent authority over company money is very different from using AI to recommend a flight or hotel. Businesses need clear limits on what agents can spend, where they can spend it and when human intervention is required. The controls around those decisions must remain fixed, traceable and accountable." — Mark Ledsham, CEO, Conferma

Budget Scale and the Executive-Frontline Disconnect The survey revealed that adoption is heaviest among enterprise-scale travel programs:

• High-Budget Acceleration: Companies spending $6.8 million or more annually on travel expect AI to handle roughly 51% of their budgets by 2028. Over half (53%) of these organizations have already deployed rigorous guardrails.

• Small-Business Prudence: Firms spending under $136,000 expect AI to oversee only 27% of travel expenses over the same horizon.

• The Confidence Chasm: A distinct rift has opened between executive leadership and procurement operators. While 86% of C-suite executives and division heads trust AI to manage corporate bookings and payments, confidence drops to 62% among frontline procurement and travel managers who bear the brunt of operational errors.

Virtual Cards as the Agentic Firebreak To bridge the trust deficit, corporate treasuries are replacing conventional plastic cards with programmable, single-use payment rails:

• Controlled Virtual Cards: Virtual cards emerged as the top payment method for securing agentic purchasing, preferred by 30% of companies, beating out digital wallets (21%) and traditional corporate credit cards (19%).

• Hardcoded Constraints: Among firms with existing safeguards, 55% mandate explicit human sign-off before an agent completes a transaction, 51% run live audit monitoring, and 49% enforce strict merchant and amount ceilings.

• Pre-Programmed Limits: Usage of controlled-limit virtual cards is projected to leap from 37% today to 48% by 2028—establishing cryptographic boundaries that give AI agents freedom to book while preventing them from overspending a single dollar.