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Advantage publishes guide to help agents combat ban on card charges
Advantage Travel Partnership has published a 12-page guide for its members designed to help them offset the impact of a ban on charging customers for card payments.
The ban, which comes into force on January 13 2018, means agents will no longer be able to pass on payment surcharges to their customers for transactions made by credit or debit card, including those made by Mastercard, Visa, Amex, PayPal and Apple Pay.
The Advantage guide tells members to firstly calculate the annual amount paid in card payment merchant fees and the resulting percentage of profit, although it recommends an over-estimation of the 2016/17 merchant fees as consumers are expected to increase their use of card payment after the ban.
Agents can use a simple downloadable calculator tool to help make their calculations.
The paper then suggests ways agents can cover the shortfall, including renegotiating commission with suppliers, revising and tracking conversion, or selling ancillary products.
It goes on to advise on upselling, motivating and incentivising sales staff and finding new business leads, and outlines money-saving tips, such as printing in black and white instead of colour and using Freephone numbers.
It also includes a directory of third party supplier ‘partners’ who offer ‘quality, value services’, including financial planning, HR and sales training.
"We hope our members find the profit protection guidance helpful and insightful and it inspires them to take steps to protect their businesses ahead of EU’s Payment Services Directive 2 coming into force," said Advantage group commercial director Paula Lacey.
"We cannot emphasise enough the significance of PSD2 and how taking action now can help lessen the impact it will have on business.
“The Advantage membership is broad and diverse and one size does not fit all and there is no single ‘silver bullet’ solution but by publishing the guidance paper we are offering some practical advice to help our members understand the impact and mitigate the additional costs resulting from the new legislation."
Meanwhile, Advantage is urging its members to assist ABTA in its lobbying by providing evidence of the detrimental effect on their businesses ahead of a statutory review currently set for 2019.
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Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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