Imagine that you want to sell a travel product — a tour or a flight, let's say — to a customer living in another country. You could accept traditional forms of payment, such as credit cards and corporate cards. But you probably would also want to accept newer types of payment, such as mobile wallets like Apple Pay and Alipay. You might want to provide credit to consumers so they could pay in installments.
To go 21st century, however, you'd have to update your back-office payment processes that date from your father's era. You'll be in good company, though: As the financial world rapidly evolves, most travel brands are racing to stay current.
Technology is one source of this change, but so is regulation. New European Union rules that come into force in December 2020 require changes in cross-border commerce. European regulators are trying to fight fraud by requiring most online payments to go through an additional level of verification called "strong" or "second-factor." The new rules will have a side effect: They'll likely prod many companies to revamp their approaches to payments because modern processes readily comply with the rules.
"The idea that I have one credit card or corporate card and pay a lot of travel things with it, well, that system has had its day," said Simon Barker, CEO of payments technology vendor Conferma Pay. "The travel industry must move to virtual cards, where a business traveler buys each thing with a separate virtual number."
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Virtual cards lend themselves much more re
