The Travel Sector Is Retooling Back-Office Payments in Response to the Crisis
Photo Credit: Apple Pay is one of the newer forms of payment that travel companies need to accommodate. The travel sector's slo-mo refund process during the pandemic has upended the dull business of how money is sent and received. Apple
Skift Take
The travel sector's slo-mo refund process has infuriated everyone. So the crisis is upending the dull business of how money is sent among travel companies, resellers, tech vendors, and financial institutions.
The coronavirus pandemic is highlighting the deep fault lines in the travel sector's technology and workflows. It has especially shaken up how hotels, airlines, agencies, and vendors handle payments.
"The challenges airlines and agencies have faced in issuing refunds for canceled flights has especially called out significant problems in payments tech," said Kristian Gjerding, CEO of CellPoint Digital, which offers payment services.
Responding to the challenge, obscure tech companies aim to upgrade the ways travel suppliers connect with banks, next-generation financial services like Apple Pay and Alipay, vendors of operational software, intermediaries, aggregators, and travel buyers.
A handful of industry players released in May new technical standards for how hotels, vendors, and financial institutions send money. The goal is to make things more modern and efficient. Mastercard is sponsoring an "early adopters program" for new technical standards created by the non-profit Hosp
