Card validation and fee collection solution for connected partners

To help reduce the workload associated with payments, we created a credit card validation and cancellation fee collection solution. It takes care of validating guests’ credit cards, charging cancellation or no-show fees, and taking liability for any chargebacks, with the ultimate goal of establishing strong customer authentication.

This article provides additional guidance on this solution for partners using third-party connectivity solutions.

What's in this article

How the solution works

Once the flow is activated for you, you’ll get a message with every reservation reminding you that we’ll validate the credit card details for the reservation.

If your PMS doesn’t accept reservations without credit card details, we’ll insert a dummy (non-chargeable) credit card as a placeholder to make sure you can receive the reservation. You don’t need to take any action with the dummy card.

Read this article for more info on the card validation and fee collection solution.

Adjusted automated payment procedures

If you use a payment solution provider system to perform automated checks on guest credit cards, you’ll need to make some adjustments to it. For reservations where we validate credit cards, you’ll need to change settings in your payment systems to allow for the dummy credit card instead. This is because these reservations don’t contain valid credit card details.

If your reservation management system sends these reservations to your payment solution without this adjustment, the authorization process may fail. If this happens, don’t mark these reservations with the Invalid CC status if you haven’t made the adjustment to your payment solution provider’s system. Make sure you check that your system doesn’t attempt to do so.

Collecting fees via VCC on the Extranet

In the case of no-shows or late cancellations, we’ll attempt to charge the guest credit card on your behalf. If your preferred payout method is bank transfer, we’ll send the amount in the same cycle as your normal payout process. Otherwise we’ll transfer the fee via virtual credit card (VCC) on the Extranet – you’ll need to be logged in to collect this payment. These VCCs with fees will only be available on Booking.com’s Extranet – not in your channel manager or PMS. Read section 2 of this article for more info on charging VCCs.

To increase the success rate of fee collection, no-shows or late cancellations must be marked within 4 days of check-in. 

If the fee collection isn’t successful, we’ll automatically waive our commission for those reservations. If a guest disputes a late cancellation or no-show fee after we charge them, we’ll take the liability for these chargebacks. You won’t be expected to take any action or refund the fee.