Payment Strategy Tips for OTA’s & Travel Agencies

Payment strategy is often not a top priority for the management, but wrong choices made in this area can impact the whole business. Masha Cilliers, Principal Consultant of Payment Options Ltd. takes a close look at payments and focuses on areas to improve efficiency and profitability:
 

Tip 1:  Choosing Payment Provider by quality not by price
•    Price is the most straight forward comparison so often we base our supplier decisions on it
•    If things go wrong the impact is felt to a larger degree than the saving was appreciated
•    Also, there are many other hidden costs and providers have very different pricing strategies
 

FOCUS ON: Which services are included; SLAs and support framework; flexibility and agility to add new features and to fix problems; existing and ex customer references    

Tip 2:  Use Alternative Payments
•    These can significantly improve the customer experience in relevant markets
•    APs undoubtedly increase volumes in Europe, Asia and increasingly other markets
•    They can be more profitable for you
•    APs have generally lower risk so savings can be made in chargebacks and fraud
 

FOCUS ON: Relevant alternative methods not just the hype; good implementation is key (minimise redirect); not quantity but suitability for the market

Tip 3:  Take control of FX
•    FX is not just a headache, it’s a big opportunity for revenue
•    Understand what your provider is doing and how they are charging
•    Look at the alternative providers -there are lots of new companies emerging in this area
•    Real-time conversion cuts down on chargebacks as the customer is charged exactly what they expected

FOCUS ON: Customer experience and good rates

Tip 4:  Good Fraud Screen is important for many reasons
•    Sophistication and technology of fraudsters are growing and fraud management has a moving target
•    Choose a provider who moves with the times
•    Cut down false positives and improve customer experience
•    Data collected as part of fraud management should be utilised for understanding customer behaviour and improving marketing and sales
 

FOCUS ON: Customer experience and intelligently using the data captured for marketing and satisfaction

Tip 5:  Invest in the Chargeback policy and process
•    There will always be chargebacks, but they can be minimised
•    Long and complex T&Cs are not the answer – instead provide information, pop ups, hover bubbles or easy instructions
•    Think hard about the policy and defend chargebacks where legitimate or use third parties
 

FOCUS ON: Systems, understanding the process, making information available for customers to check and validate

Masha Cilliers is founder and Principal Consultant at Payment Options, and Associate at Consult Hyperion, London. She is a senior professional with 20 years of experience in Payments, Fraud Management, eCommere, M-Commerce and other digital consumer payments and related services.