Online Payments
Enhancing and improving your payment experience
Revenue security has always been an important component of the payments solutions we offer. Booking.com is also committed to helping partners streamline their payment operations and reduce operational costs related to payment management. We also know customers want to book with confidence by knowing exactly how much they will be charged, when, and by whom.
To offer confidence to bookers and enhance the value and revenue security we deliver to partners, Booking.com is evolving its approach to managing payments. By gradually facilitating more guest payments on your behalf starting early 2021, we aim to bring extra clarity and certainty to travelers while helping partners increase revenue security, save time, and comply with new legislation on authenticating payments. In the near term, two key new features will help partners with cash flow and cost savings.
Enhancements to Online Payments
We’ve been making ongoing improvements to Online Payments, adding more payment options for guests and more benefits for partners. Key improvements coming soon include a cost savings for virtual credit cards (VCCs) and better cash flow. These updates will happen automatically for you, so no action needed from you.
Lower transaction costs
We’ve sourced a new type of virtual credit card (VCC) that’s 25% less expensive to charge. Depending on your agreement with your payments service provider, you should see a reduction in the fees you pay for VCCs.
Better cash flow control
Due to the unpredictability caused by COVID-19, we implemented a short-term change to the activation dates of all virtual credit cards (VCCs), moving them to one day after check-in. We aimed to reverse this temporary change as soon as the levels of disruption caused by the crisis subsided. We’re reinstating earlier virtual card activation for eligible partners to enable better cash flow management. As long as you remain eligible, you can continue to benefit, which you can read more about in Partner Help.
Visit the Extranet to see how much you’ll save and to check your eligibility for earlier VCC activation dates.
We’re evolving Online Payments to bring you more benefits
Starting early 2021, Booking.com will begin to gradually facilitate more guest payments on your behalf. This means you’ll start to see these benefits for a larger portion of your reservations next year:
- Guaranteed payouts: When you’re owed money, it will always be paid.
- Fraud protection and chargeback defense: We provide a secure payment system with round-the-clock fraud screening and chargeback defense.
- Fewer cancellations and no-shows: On average, customers who choose to pay when they book are four times less likely to cancel. This can help optimize your occupancy rate and reduce unpredictability.
- Less time on administration: Less time dealing with credit card authorizations, no-show fee collection, and invalid credit cards means more time for you to invest in your business.
- Support with Strong Customer Authentication: The latest legislation for payments requires all payment transactions made in the European Economic Area (EEA) from January 2021 to support Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) when charging cards remotely. Now that we’ve taken care of these authentication requirements for you, you’ll have a reduced risk of a credit card being declined.
