Accepting online payments is highly important for travel businesses, and payment gateways make it possible. But before describing the features and benefits of a payment gateway for travel agency, let's get acquainted with its concept.
A payment gateway can be described as an intermediary service that authorises electronic transactions and routes payment information between merchants, banks, and other processing participants through a single communication protocol. It accompanies each transaction from start to finish, ensuring the protection of credit card payments and preventing possible data breaches and fraud. Payment gateways allow merchants worldwide to accept online payments 24/7, ensuring a smooth checkout process for every customer who wants to pay for their services instantly.
Let's find out exactly how the payment gateway is involved in online transaction processing:
If you’re a group travel agency, car rental agency, tour operator, hotel booking website, or airline, you’ll definitely need a merchant account and an efficient payment processing solution to accept card payments from travellers all over the world.
The primary purpose of setting up travel agency payment processing is to enable fast, secure, and convenient payment acceptance. Now, we will list and describe the benefits that a payment gateway provides to the travel sector.
With an integrated payment gateway for travel agency, travellers can book hotels and buy tickets in a few clicks, selecting their preferred payment method and local currency. Given the global nature of the travel business, international payment processing solutions allow you to accept various currencies while avoiding high interchange fees. The list of supported currencies is also extensive. For example, Corefy’s platform supports 200+ currencies and 1000+ currency pairs, providing favourable conditions for global expansion.
Every travel agency knows how important it is to ensure a simple and intuitive customer journey. If you offer your travel services worldwide, covering a global audience, you have to satisfy every customer, regardless of their region, currency and payment preferences. To accept transactions on-site, ensuring smooth and secure authorisation, you need to integrate a platform that supports checkout customisation. The customisable checkout page allows travellers to pay for your services without being redirected to third-party websites and from any device.
Except for impulsive travellers, most people choose travel dates days and months in advance. But often, travellers cancel trips for various reasons and initiate chargebacks. There are also fraud chargebacks when a cardholder finds a way to abuse company policies. This is the main reason why travel-related businesses belong to a high-risk category, and many banks and PSPs aren’t willing to cooperate with them. To avoid financial losses, choose a merchant account provider that handles chargebacks.
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Whether you provide rental, hotel booking, or ticket services, integrating a robust payment processing platform is a must if you want to attract more customers and stay competitive. Let your clients go on vacation, business trips, or package tours with the knowledge that their payments are protected and successfully completed. Of course, you can't do without a payment gateway here. Now, we will provide you with some guidelines for choosing a payment gateway and a merchant account for your travel business.
Fees make up the bulk of the costs in the case of an international travel business. Payment processing solutions have different pricing models and fee structures, and you need to be clear about them before opting for a certain payment gateway and merchant account provider. Most PSPs charge a fee per transaction; someone may offer a monthly fee for a fixed number of transactions. Plus, there’re additional fees, such as chargeback fees, cancellation fees, currency conversion fees, etc. Do thorough research on the pricing policies of different providers and choose the one that suits you best. For example, at Corefy, you can pay for a plan annually or monthly, based on your preferences. Plus, you may cancel at any time.
As a travel merchant, your main goal is to instil confidence in the reliability of your company. This applies to the services you offer and the measures you take to protect your customer’s privacy. Regardless of the type and size of your travel agency, there is a huge need to protect you and your customers from fraudulent transactions and identity theft. In addition to PCI compliance, pay attention to the security tools that a particular processor uses daily. Among them are encryption, tokenisation, SSL, penetration testing, and others.
The travel industry is about 24/7 work without weekends and holidays. Whether it’s a Sunday or late at night, your customers can easily book a trip from you and pay for it instantly. In the event of a failure in transaction processing, it is crucial to fix the problem quickly. Otherwise, you can miss out on a good profit. That’s why you should choose a payment processing solution with around-the-clock support.
Getting a merchant account and setting up payment processing for a merchant in the travel industry is not an easy task. But we at Corefy have you covered. Choose as many payment providers as you want and connect them with a few clicks for smooth cash flow and high conversion rates. Book a demo with us to see for yourself!
