ITILITE brings Credit Card Authorization to every hotel booking - even without an ITILITE Card
Credit Card Authorization (CCAuth) automates one of the most manual parts of hotel booking, getting a hotel to accept a virtual card on file instead of chasing down authorization forms by hand. ITILITE already had this. The problem was who could use it.
- CCAuth only worked for ITILITE Card customers: If your company hadn't onboarded onto the ITILITE Card program, this automation simply wasn't available to you, regardless of how badly you needed it.
- Payment method didn't matter to the need: Companies on central cards, user cards, or wallet all had the exact same hotel-authorization headache. Only card program customers got relief.
- The card program became an unnecessary prerequisite: A feature that should have been about how hotels get paid was instead gated behind what payment product you'd already adopted.
What ITILITE Built
CCAuth now works for any payment setup, you don't need to be on the ITILITE Card program to use it.
- Your company's central card, user card, or wallet is charged for the hotel booking amount, exactly as it would be today
- ITILITE generates a virtual card - with a configurable buffer percentage, from its own card account and sends that to the hotel as the card on file
- That booking is automatically picked up by the existing CCAuth process, which completes the authorization using the virtual card details
One thing worth knowing upfront: because these virtual cards draw on ITILITE's own account balance rather than yours, high-volume customers using this will need more frequent account top-ups to keep it funded. It's a real tradeoff, not a hidden one.
It's currently enabled for select customers, and turned on through client-level configuration for anyone who needs it, talk to your CSM to get it switched on.
Part of a Bigger Shift in How ITILITE Card Works
This is one piece of a broader move to make card-adjacent capabilities available regardless of what payment product a customer is on. The same year saw the Card Application Portal replace manual KYC paperwork, reconciliation hit 95%+ automatically, and BSP/ARC cash payments get automated for airlines that require it. CCAuth for non-Card customers follows the same logic: automation that used to require adopting the full card program now works on top of whatever payment setup you already have.
Who Should Care About This
- Companies on wallet, central card, or user card who want automated hotel authorization without adopting the ITILITE Card program
- Travel managers currently relying on manual credit card authorization forms for hotel bookings
- Finance teams who want fewer offline authorization steps regardless of which payment method their company uses
- High-volume customers considering this, plan for more frequent account top-ups, since the virtual cards are funded from ITILITE's account balance
Where This Goes
The pattern here is decoupling automation from product adoption, CCAuth shouldn't require a card program any more than reconciliation should require a specific payment type. Expect more of ITILITE's card-linked capabilities to work the same way: available based on what you need, not what you've already bought.
Anish Khadiya co-founded ITILITE in 2017 after spending nearly a decade building the strategic and operational instincts that now shape how the company goes to market.
Before ITILITE, Anish was an Engagement Manager at McKinsey & Company. He experienced firsthand how inefficient corporate travel management was — not just as a traveler, but as a consultant helping organizations identify exactly where their operational costs were leaking. He later served as Director of Strategy & Planning at Myntra, before joining Mayank to build ITILITE from the ground up.
At ITILITE, Anish leads the business side , from revenue and partnerships to customer success. Anish holds a B.Tech (Hons) from IIT Kharagpur and a PGDM from IIM Lucknow.
Anish is ITILITE's go-to voice on the future of corporate travel and expense management, you'll find him on podcasts and webinars speaking about AI, spend visibility, and what modern T&E looks like for construction, manufacturing, healthcare staffing, and IT companies.
