Taking It Up A Notch

For agents, it’s a daily occurrence – the payment and settlement for air travel that requires multiple entries in the reconciliation process, ultimately driving cost and inefficiencies.

Although corporations look to increase the security of business travel accounts with high credit limits and reduce the number of travellers using personal credit cards to book travel, both corporations and travel agents need the ability to process air payments in a more seamless, trusted fashion.

In an effort to increase acceptance of virtual payments by buyers and suppliers, Sabre Corporation and its partner in the payment space Conferma have integrated the Sabre Virtual Payment solution for air tickets into the Sabre Red Workspace.

The enhanced digital payment capability is offered as a new standard form of payment, giving agents the ability to generate virtual cards as part of existing ticketing and payment processes.

The new payment method will be listed alongside credit cards, cash or check options, providing flexibility within a seamless payment process for the agency, corporation and the traveller.

The standard payment integration eliminates the need for mid/back office providers and online corporate booking tools such as GetThere to modify their business processes and incur additional technical expenses.

Sabre Virtual Payments gives agents the option to set credit limits, apply date restrictions and define merchant categories – a set of controls that help agents to pay more efficiently while reducing the risk of fraud.

It can be used at time of ticketing, refunding and exchanging, and it can be stored in customers’ preferences through the Sabre Profiles capability.

Neil Fyfe, vice-president of virtual payments at Sabre, said: “For each air ticket, the traditional forms of payment challenge travel agents with high risk of fraud, exposing corporate accounts and requiring extra time for reconciliation. A more secure and efficient way to pay is now available for Sabre-connected agencies, and it is part of the core reservation flow in the Sabre Red Workspace and Sabre APIs. In addition when using virtual payments within the GetThere booking tool, we provide incremental detailed reconciliation data available for expense management.”

Go to http://www.sabre.com for more.