Travel is Considered a High Risk Business

Regardless of how your business serves the travel industry, it is likely require a high risk merchant account. It may not seem logical that, for example, your small Inn is in the same merchant account category as a firearms business, but here are some reasons why:

• Much of travel is booked far in advance, which leaves a lot of time and circumstance to intervene and change the travelers plans. That may come in the form of a cancelled reservation requiring a refund.
• Chargebacks happen. Travelers have high expectations of your services and if you don’t meet them you may find yourself on the receiving end of a chargeback. And considering the size of travel expenditures, a single chargeback can be in the many thousands. 
• In the era of Coronavirus travel, restrictions are tight and changing frequently and travelers are being forced into last minute reservations, or last minute cancellations. Either of these can lead to major changes in the travelers plans: refunds, cancellations, penalties and chargebacks.
• One cancellation leads to many. A cancelled tour booking can trickle down to any number of vendors. From airlines to bike rental, any person who was offering a traveler service may need to adjust, refund or cancel their previous payments. 
• Overall volatility is bad for business, and no business is more volatile now than travel. It is risky for the traveler, the agent and the processors. By making Travel a High Risk Merchant Category, the underwriters are ensuring they have substantial liquidity to manage the chargebacks, refunds and, increasingly, to cover the sudden closures of long-standing hotels and restaurants. By placing travel businesses into high risk, they are hedging their bets against you.

Millennials are a High Risk TraveL Demographic

While Baby Boomers may like to book their cruises, tours and flights a year in advance, Millennials are more likely to travel at the last minute, chase cheap fares and pay digitally on the go.

This can lead to lower margin reservations that have been made on impulse. Payments have also typically been made by mobile device. That combination can lead to a higher number of cancelled reservations and chargebacks and is one of the current forces why travel is considered a high risk business.

Domestic Merchant Accounts for the Travel Industry

Many of the previously mentioned issues help explain why travel is a high risk business. It is also why offshore payment processors have been required for travel. Offshore merchant accounts, however, are notoriously expensive and can reduce the number of approved transactions. It can also limit the number of methods you can use to take payments.

This is why Bankcard Brokers has created a network of domestic payment processors for travel merchant accounts. By working with a Bankcard Brokers Travel Merchant account, your business will be able to take payments in many forms, not just credit cards. This will include direct debit, e-wallets, bank transfers, ACH and many more. For in-person travel businesses this can include contactless payments and mobile payments.These will broaden the number of ways you can get paid, and that includes receiving payments from international clients.

Our domestically-baed accounts offer better rates than offshore merchant accounts and tend to have lower or no additional fees compared to offshore processors too. Domestic processors will be able to provide you with faster, even daily, funding with no wire transfer fees.

They’ll also be able to provide customer service on your time, with domestic agents.

We invite you to contact us for a no-obligation free quote and to introduce you to our services. We are CPP Certified, which means we’ll always have your best interest at heart. And with our domestic solutions, we can have you pre-approved quickly and processing fast.