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.
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