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The latest news, thoughts and insights from our experts in travel payments

Insights

The Surcharge Myth: How smart surcharging recovers your lost thousands

Many travel businesses believe card surcharges are banned altogether, but that’s a (costly) myth. While consumer card surcharges are prohibited, corporate and international cards are fair game. Learn how Felloh’s smart surcharging helps you recover processing costs compliantly and protect your margins.

Caroline Rennie

The Surcharge Myth: How smart surcharging recovers your lost thousands

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Reconciliation: What it is and why your Travel Business needs it

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Celebrating Another Year as an AITO Business Partner

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Barclays ePDQ Service is Retiring: A 4-Step Guide for Travel Merchants

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Categories

Insights

Reconciliation: What it is and why your Travel Business needs it

Updates

Celebrating Another Year as an AITO Business Partner

News

Barclays ePDQ Service is Retiring: A 4-Step Guide for Travel Merchants

Stories

Case Study: How Adventurous Ewe automated 100+ Payment Links – without leaving their spreadsheet

Insights

Will AI be an optimiser or disruptor for travel businesses? What it actually means for you.

News

Felloh Shortlisted for Mastercard B2B Payments Award at Travolution Awards 2024

Updates

Enhance Your Payment Success with Felloh's AI Decline Analysis for the Travel Industry

Insights

How to avoid chargebacks in travel payments

Insights

Reconciliation: What it is and why your Travel Business needs it

Updates

Celebrating Another Year as an AITO Business Partner

News

Barclays ePDQ Service is Retiring: A 4-Step Guide for Travel Merchants

Stories

Case Study: How Adventurous Ewe automated 100+ Payment Links – without leaving their spreadsheet

Insights

How to make your travel business flow seamlessly

Insights

Zapier + Felloh: Reconciling Acquirer Settlements in Xero (and Beyond) Made Easy

Updates

Navigating change: What we learned from ABTA finance conference day 2

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Will AI be an optimiser or disruptor for travel businesses? What it actually means for you.

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Everything travel businesses need to know about chargebacks

Running a travel business is challenging enough without having to deal with chargebacks eating into your profits and taking up valuable time. This FREE practical guide covers 5 proven strategies on how to avoid them.

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Everything travel businesses need to know about chargebacks

Running a travel business is challenging enough without having to deal with chargebacks eating into your profits and taking up valuable time. This FREE practical guide covers 5 proven strategies on how to avoid them.

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Everything travel businesses need to know about chargebacks

Running a travel business is challenging enough without having to deal with chargebacks eating into your profits and taking up valuable time. This FREE practical guide covers 5 proven strategies on how to avoid them.

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Get free resources

We love sharing our travel expertise, so we're always creating new resources to help travel businesses succeed.

Free guide

Everything travel businesses need to know about chargebacks

Running a travel business is challenging enough without having to deal with chargebacks eating into your profits and taking up valuable time. This FREE practical guide covers 5 proven strategies on how to avoid them.

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Free guide

Everything travel businesses need to know about chargebacks

Running a travel business is challenging enough without having to deal with chargebacks eating into your profits and taking up valuable time. This FREE practical guide covers 5 proven strategies on how to avoid them.

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Free guide

Everything travel businesses need to know about chargebacks

Running a travel business is challenging enough without having to deal with chargebacks eating into your profits and taking up valuable time. This FREE practical guide covers 5 proven strategies on how to avoid them.

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Insights

Will Bicknell

Payments is full of jargon and several different parties to make it happen, here we explain how it all fits together and the Role of Merchant Acquirers, Card Schemes and Card Issuers in the UK

Who's who in card payments

What to do next?

  • 1

    Automate your manual tasks with AI-powered Software as a Service

    You don’t need in-house AI tools to do this, most software providers will be doing the heavy lifting for you

  • 2

    Step up your SEO and AI Optimisation (AIO) strategy

    Make sure your experiences are easily discoverable in consumer-generated itineraries. If you’ve invested in search engine optimisation (SEO) in the past, a lot of that work will be paying off now, but if not, it’s never too late to tag your images, set meta descriptions and make sure your most important content is machine readable.

  • 3

    Experiment cautiously with customer facing AI tools

    If you’re not yet using any AI in your business, now is not the time to rip out your search function on your website and replace it with an AI chat bot! As an end consumer you probably know how frustrating it can be to deal with a poorly trained bot. Instead, find a problem you have which is worth solving but not business critical to start learning in a low-risk environment.

Who's who in card payments

Who's who in card payments

Insights

Will Bicknell

The Role of Merchant Acquirers, Card Schemes and Card Issuers in the UK

When you make a payment with a credit or debit card, there are a number of different organisations involved in processing the transaction. These include the merchant acquirer, the card scheme, and the card issuer.

The merchant acquirer is the financial institution that works with merchants, in our case travel agents or tour operators, to accept credit and debit cards. The acquire collect the payments from the cardholder's bank and then send the funds to the merchant.

The card scheme is an organisation that sets the rules for how credit and debit cards are used. Card Schemes also provide the infrastructure that allows merchants and cardholders to connect with each other. The most well-known card schemes in the UK are Visa, Mastercard, and American Express.

The card issuer is the bank or financial institution that issued the credit or debit card to the cardholder. The issuer is responsible for managing the cardholder's account, including processing payments, setting spending limits, and issuing refunds.

When a cardholder makes a payment with a credit or debit card, the following steps take place (I have skipped some authorisation and fraud checks for simplicity)

  1. The merchant swipes the card or enters the card details into a payment terminal or the cardholder enters their own details in a form.
  2. The information from the card is sent to the merchant acquirer
  3. The acquirer sends the information to the card scheme
  4. The card scheme sends the information to the card issuer
  5. The card issuer authorises the payment and sends the funds back to the card scheme.
  6. The card scheme sends the funds back to the merchant acquirer.
  7. The merchant acquirer sends the funds to the merchant.

The merchant acquirer and the card issuer each charge a fee for processing card payments. These fees are known as scheme fees and interchange.

Scheme fees are charged by the card scheme to the merchant acquirer. These fees cover the costs of operating the card scheme, such as fraud prevention and marketing.

Interchange is charged by the merchant acquirer to the card issuer. This fee covers the costs of processing the payment, such as authorisation and settlement.

The amount of scheme fees and interchange charged for a card payment varies depending on the type of card, the amount of the transaction, and the merchant's location.

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