The Evolution of Travel Payments (Fintalk)

The travel space was hit especially hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. For merchants, this created a need to explore new options in payments and payment methods.

Join Harlan Hutson, Director of Strategic Partnerships for Fi911 and Paul van Alfen, Travel Payments Strategist for Up in the Air as they discuss the latest in travel payments. 

For consumers, credit cards became even more important as a safe haven against non-delivery. How will this affect the merchant/acquirer relationship? What new opportunities exist for travel? And are there specific risks that merchants need to know about?

 

Learn about the “Acceleration of digital transformation” due to the pandemic. Consumers might have been accustomed to going out to stores, restaurants, and other brick-and-mortar outlets, but couldn’t. Using apps for delivery, click-and-collect, and other practices was “for certain demographics, for the older generations, probably not yet ‘business-as-usual’ as it would be for younger generations.” Mobile payments offer advantages and disadvantages for security. They’re more secure, so “When you use your mobile device, it’s an EMV transaction. It’s authenticated. It was you, it’s your device, your face scan, your fingerprint. So, you can chargeback it, but no, you did it.” At the same time, the ease of filing chargebacks on mobile transactions has its drawbacks. “It helps gives confidence in the use of cards overall, but it also probably makes more people aware of [the chargeback process], and they might try it out in other areas as well.” Credit is not as widely used in Northern European countries like Germany, The Netherlands, and the Nordic countries. This has allowed for wider use of debit, and direct debit payments in particular, in the travel space.