Alternatively, companies will just go back to corporate cards with very strict vendor rules. When vendor rules are not enough, they will go back to extremely tight per diem and simply not care of the expense was strictly real or not. I can't see any advantage to using a whole new currency and exchange that every vendor in the world is now going to have to support for this to be useful vs these simple measures.

> these simple measures

I'm not sure either, it's mostly a guess I guess, more than a prediction. But if companies/governments can get more tracking, usually that's the way they move.

So if the companies that are complaining in the article implements your simple measures, does that mean the fraud problem they're talking about have been solved already? That begs the question, why aren't they just doing that then?

Not solved but constrained. If I post you per diem. I no longer have to worry about if what you spend it on is legit or not

The problem isn't "spending above/below per diem" as I understand the article. The problem is that whatever spending is happening, might be fake, that's why they're complaining about "faking expense receipts".

So it does seem like the companies themselves do worry about if what you spend it on is legit or not, it's almost the entire purpose of the article unless I misunderstand something?

In my experience, this form of expense management is a relatively new development. Not so long ago, I had a company linked corporate card. Credit card transactions are already labeled with the type of purchase. You have to submit a report that corresponds to the actual charged amount. Additionally, they get all the bills with their hotel partner to cross reference the transactions with the credit card and the submitted expense. Flights etc worked the same way. Those are now additionally tracked in the company travel relationship portals which accomplish the block chain without the block chain. None of this requires a global immutable currency ledger or anything like that to accomplish their goal: just get some reasonable transaction validation long enough to process the expense then never look at it past an audit. Later, they also made people eat from the same hotel and negate the issue for meal expenses. It's just not a technology problem. If it were, they would just demand more granularity from the credit card company and the employee and reject things out of policy.

> because then purchases/expenses/bills and anything else can be tracked fully across the spectrum.

Traditional banking already does this very well in most countries, through centralized systems with multiple redundant tracking and audit methods. Furthermore, crypto transaction fees are ludicrously high by comparision, and rarely offer the combination of "fast transactions" and "undo button" that traditional banking can provide.

> Traditional banking already does this very well in most countries, through centralized systems with multiple redundant tracking and audit methods

So how does traditional banking solve the very problem the submission article is about? Companies seem to say this is an issue today, some seeing 15% fraudulent receipts, if traditional banking did these things well, why are these companies still seeing these issue?

Again, I'm not arguing that things will be better with cryptocurrencies, just that if we suddenly see companies and governments urging people to adopt cryptocurrencies, I'd totally understand why, although I'd push against it as much as I could.

In my employers case they issue everyone a company card that has expense policies built in (it literally won't let you spend outside of policy). If you need to do a personal card expense it needs multiple levels of approval.

Sounds like a OK solution and much better than letting cryptocurrencies infect every side of society.

Maybe the companies in the article complaining about the fraud isn't aware you can do something like that? Or is there something else stopping them from doing that? Why isn't everyone doing that if it solves the very problem outlined in the article?

> Maybe the companies in the article complaining about the fraud isn't aware you can do something like that?

This is shockingly common in the business world. It's like, 40% of the reason the big consulting firms exist - to tell insular businesses that "hey, you can buy an off the shelf solution to this problem"

Another usecase that already works better without any cryptocurrency or blockchain involved.

In Estonia, the government offers public key infrastructure, so any party needing to prove legitimacy of documents from a 3rd party can get it digitally signed by the originator. For example, when you need a bank statement, you can just download a signed PDF (technically it's a zip, but whatever) that proves the legal entity (or person) that ensures it's legitimate.

> Another usecase that already works better without any cryptocurrency or blockchain involved.

Agreed! But if I've learned anything in my years on earth so far, is that anything that can be misused, will be misused, and if companies and government can do something that adds more abilities for tracking people, they'll go that way. If it can work cross-border, give people the impression it's "the future" and let companies/governments get more power, then they'll continuously push for that future.

Putting coercive governments aside, the cryptocurrency would need to allow for transaction reversals (a.k.a. “chargebacks”) like credit cards do today, and additionally need to have some kind of “know your customer” (KYC) capability, not just a public ledger that points to crypto wallet addresses but actual names and addresses, so that the “credit system” can identify fraudsters and, at minimum, mark them as such by lowering their credit score.

Why would a government use cryptocurrencies though? You only need that if you have no single source of truth. For a government digital banking is enough and way cheaper. Unless by crypto you just mean cryptographically signed transaction logs or something.

> Why would a government use cryptocurrencies though?

Once it happens in the future, probably because the already rich politicians have loaded up on some specific cryptocurrency they then try to pitch as the official currency for their country. Already happened once, and I'm sure we'll see more of it in the future as the overton window moves when the population gets older.

I don't think it's a good idea, I'm not eager to reach that future, but it's hard not to have the most negative view of the future considering what's happening in the moment around the world. I guess I'm too pessimistic not to see that as the eventual outcome.

The much more easy thing is that they reimburse you only for what you charge to the company card. This is much more feasible now than it was even 10 years ago.

Indeed, my employer provides everyone who needs to travel or expense a company card that only works when you are actively traveling and knows your spending policies, what places you're expected to be, etc.

I have had to occasionally expense something on a personal card and I had to get multiple levels of manager approval afterwards (not difficult, just explained the circumstance to them.)

This seems part of the design - make the non-card reimbursement process so painful that everyone prefers to use the corporate card.

Yeah, if I use the corporate card and stay in policy I don't have to fill out expense forms :)

How much does it cost a business to manage say 10K company cards, maybe even globally? Sounds like a huge hassle, compared to "Send us a photo of your lunch receipt each day then at the end of the month we reimburse you".

Likely less than the sum of costs and losses associated with verifying photos of receipts.

My expense card has an app that uses AI to OCR your receipts, automatically fills out 95-100% of the expense form, and for most transactions auto-approves it via per diem policy rules.

My employer contracts with a vendor that manages them. It's not expensive or difficult anymore. Even individual consumers can mint "virtual cards" with different time-based or merchant-based spending policies and limits for free, since like five years ago now. (https://www.capitalone.com/learn-grow/money-management/what-...)

> Even individual consumers can mint "virtual cards" with different spending policies (see Capital One Eno) for free.

That's something else, isn't it? Or how do you pay with those at a typical POS terminal at a random lunch place?

You can add them to Google Wallet/Apple Pay. Useful for giving a family member a limited expense card, e.g. you can set up a "let my kid buy up to $X of food on weekends" card they can add to your phone.

Huh, interesting stuff, didn't know about it. Thanks for explaining!

Any ideas why the companies in the article doesn't just do that to fight the fraud then?

Replied in thread - they probably just don't know you can do it, because companies think in highly insular ways.

Not very much when there are products like this: https://floatfinancial.com/blog/virtual-credit-cards-canada/

I basically got out before this was a requirement but, yeah, to the degree that routine employee fraud becomes a material issue, locking things down becomes a grumble, grumble thing but it's just what companies will do.

You have this flipped. Expense management systems with embedded company cards are an order of magnitude easier to managed and reconcile than dealing with thousands of employees' personal expenses and payouts

If it's daily, why not just do a per diem and forget about tracking it?

Some costs can't be per diem, e.g. travel costs to a conference or meeting for a distributed team.

Many companies are penny-pinchers and can't stand the thought of some people getting more than they actually spent. I don't know either, and couldn't stand working in such companies, but I've definitely contracted for companies like that and it seems miserable.

Costs differ by location. Formal per diems, even with some attempt to adjust, end up screwing employees who are in higher cost locations (and/or have higher standards). Which may be fine--or not.

But, to the degree that fraud becomes a real issue, it may be the simplest thing to do.

Shorting someone who is getting funds for lunch by a couple bucks is not in fact "screwing them".

Perhaps. But I also have standards for both accommodations and meals that I never pushed too hard on but may be different from those you have. If work travel is consistently costing me a lot of money, I'm going to have an issue.

Why would you get hate for it, because you are promoting cryptocurrency and conflating it with blockchain?

Because any time you mention cryptocurrencies and/or blockchain, you end up with a ton of replies that either argues completely different points, or misunderstand how things work, especially on HN.

Your reply is a good example. I said "I'm not arguing that things will be better with cryptocurrencies" and you say "because you are promoting cryptocurrency". I'm sure some people like this way of conversing, but for me it's exhausting, like what's the point?

The point is accuracy, clarity, and not muddying concepts. You can acknowledge the benefits of blockchain as an immutable ledger without bringing cryptocurrency into it. I don’t care either way, but saying you’ll “get hate” signals you knew the post was inaccurate or provocative - on a possibly throwaway account…

> You can acknowledge the benefits of blockchain as an immutable ledger

For me that's not a benefit, where are you getting that I've said so from?

The only thing I said was that I understand why'd companies/governments would try to force cryptocurrencies on people, even though I personally wouldn't like that.

> but saying you’ll “get hate” signals you knew the post was inaccurate or provocative

I'm said that because I've been around on HN for more than a decade and know there are people just waiting to jump on anything where cryptocurrencies OR blockchain is mentioned, and they usually try to argue against points no one makes. If you've been around HN for a long time, you know this to be true too, it isn't exactly a secret.

> on a possibly throwaway account

Just a new account from a member who initially signed up around 2008 sometime :) Obviously not a throwaway account if you go through my comments, I've been using it exclusively since I switched.

> For me that's not a benefit, where are you getting that I've said so from?

You mentioned expense tracking. A benefit of blockchain as far as the corporations or government would be concerned - not you personally. No worries. :)

You mean digital currencies - not crypto currencies.

And yeah they are already pushing for this for a long time already

> digital currencies - not crypto currencies

Are those "digital currencies" not using cryptography? If so, they're a cryptocurrency, regardless how centralized or not they are. See Tether for an example of a centralized "cryptocurrency" (not "digital currency").

> Are those "digital currencies" not using cryptography? If so, they're a cryptocurrency, regardless how centralized or not they are.

By this logic buying something on Amazon in USD, or doing a bank transfer from a Wells Fargo account to a Bank of America account, or paying a water bill is using a cryptocurrency hahaha

Is that really the basis of those transfers, or something that they're using? This is why it's kind of tiresome to even mention cryptocurrencies/blockchain, all the "assume good intentions" and "answer charitable" suddenly flies out the window.

Why is it that some topics just triggers some raw emotional feelings in people?

Yes, when I worked with moving money between businesses and banks decades ago, we used public key crypto as part of the system for sharing ledgers and running transactions. Banks aren't stupid, any technology that can actually reduce fraud by more than the cost of using the system gets quickly adopted.

Yeah, of course, why wouldn't they? No one claimed otherwise.

That's already accomplished by centralized ledgers, at a tiny fraction of the cost.

It's just going to make gold all the more valuable