Travel agency merchant accounts are often categorized as high risk because of their history of chargebacks. This makes banks and payment processors leery of working with this industry.

Luckily, there are still providers who offer solutions for this industry to keep them growing and profitable. These solutions include multicurrency payments and strong fraud prevention.

Multicurrency Payments

For travel businesses with clients all over the globe, multi-currency payments can help streamline transaction processes. National Transaction supports a wide range of currencies for incoming payments and offers a simple checkout flow that allows customers to select their home currency.

While the travel industry is a robust economy, it’s prone to the same challenges as other high-ticket industries. Due to the large ticket size, travel agencies and tour operators often have trouble securing merchant accounts. High chargeback rates and the need for frequent refunds also raise red flags with acquiring banks.

Choosing a payment processor that understands these issues and can provide solutions will improve the chances of obtaining an account for your business. While it may be tempting to fudge the details of your application or use an offshore processing company to get an account, this will likely only cause problems in the future as well as increased costs. In the end, it’s best to find a provider that can explicitly support your industry and has a track record of doing so.

A trustworthy processor will provide a solution that allows you to process credit cards and other types of electronic payments. This can be done in-person at your storefront or online through your website. In addition, the best processors will also offer a mobile payment gateway and a virtual terminal for recurring billing or tokenization.

Additionally, a good travel processor will have a robust fraud prevention system that can help you fight chargebacks and keep your account open. This includes a rapid refund system and well-formatted statement descriptions. It is important to minimize chargebacks as much as possible because they can quickly derail a travel merchant’s account.

High Volume

Depending on your business model, you may need a travel merchant account that offers high volume travel payment processing. This is because travel businesses typically have higher ticket amounts and sales volume than other types of businesses. This type of account will enable you to take advantage of lower inter-region interchange rates, which are fees that credit card networks charge for each transaction they process.

This type of account will also allow you to take advantage of chargeback mitigation and dispute management services. These services will notify you when your customers call their card issuing bank to dispute a transaction, giving you the opportunity to issue a refund. This will prevent you from getting hit with costly chargebacks and help you keep your sales and profit margins intact.

p>If your travel agency has a history of a lot of chargebacks, you will need to find a processor that specializes in high risk travel merchant accounts. Many of these processors are familiar with the problems that travel businesses have with chargebacks and are ready to handle them. If you are dealing with a lot of chargebacks, you should shop around for the best deal on a travel merchant account. You can browse CardFellow’s high risk processor directory to locate a processor that will offer you a merchant account for your travel agency.

Although travel and tourism is one of the world’s largest industries, it is considered a high-risk industry by banks and credit card processors. This is mainly due to the large number of potential refunds that travel agencies must process. As a result, some processors refuse to provide merchant accounts for travel and tourism companies. This is a serious concern as travel and tourism is an essential industry that provides jobs to millions of people worldwide.

PCI-DSS Level 1

When choosing a credit card processing merchant account for your travel business, be sure to find one that can handle the high-risk nature of this industry. Many processors are leery of offering travel related payment solutions because they are concerned about potential fraudulent transactions and chargebacks, and it could damage their reputation if they are found to be working with such an industry.

A good credit card processing merchant account for your travel agency will be able to provide you with an application package that includes detailed information on how you plan to keep fraud and chargebacks under control, including a risk management strategy. This helps the underwriter to understand your ability to manage the transaction risk and can speed up your approval process.

PCI-DSS is a set of standards created by Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express that details how companies should protect cardholder data. Compliance is a requirement for any company that accepts credit card payments online or through other channels. Companies that fail to comply can face fines, costly forensic audits, and even lose their ability to process payments.

Depending on their number of annual transactions, each company falls into one of four levels of compliance:

Level 1 is reserved for large merchants that process more than 6 million annual card-not-present transactions. Merchants in this category might need to submit an onsite audit by a qualified security assessor (QSA). Level 2 is for service providers that process fewer than six million annual transactions, but who also must complete quarterly scans by an ASV and complete an Attestation of Compliance (AOC). Level 3 is for merchants that process between 20,000 and one million annual card-not-present transactions. Those who fall into this category need to complete a Self-Assessment Questionnaire (SAQ).

Try our Exclusive, Award Winning Electronic Invoicing platform, NTCePay absolutely free when you mention this page on our site.