A trust account is a separate account, governed by a trust deed and trustee, where customer money is held until the underlying service has been delivered. Trust accounts are widely used in regulated travel to protect customer money against supplier failure and are a key part of regimes such as ATOL Trust, ABTA arrangements and Package Travel Regulations compliance. Movements in and out are governed by the deed.
Travel payments glossary
Trust account
An account where customer funds are held in trust until the underlying service is delivered.
Why it matters in travel
Trust accounts are central to consumer-protection regimes in travel and to the trust regulators and schemes place on the industry. They have to be reconciled against bookings, suppliers and protected status, and evidence has to be available for audit at any time.
A trust-account discrepancy is not like a regular reconciliation difference — it is a regulatory exposure. A balance that should be held in trust but has been used for operating cash can trigger ATOL or regulator investigation; a refund issued from the wrong account can collapse the trust treatment of a whole booking cohort. The discipline required is constant.
The travel businesses that handle trust accounts well treat them as a real-time picture of protected liability, not a quarterly accounting exercise. Every booking-level event — deposit, refund, supplier payment, departure — reads from and writes to the trust position automatically. The businesses that treat trust as a monthly tidy-up live with the risk that the picture is wrong on any given day.
How felloh helps
felloh keeps trust account movements aligned to the booking and protection record so the picture available to finance, the trustee and the regulator is the same one.
Where this shows up in compliance and protection.
Trust account touches more than one workflow at felloh. Start with the pages most travel teams reach for next.
- Compliance & Reporting
Prepare ATOL, APC, trust and audit evidence from live booking data — without a separate reporting layer.
Explore - Simplify ATOL & Trustee Reporting
Trust, escrow and protected-funds evidence drawn from the same record as the underlying payment.
Explore - Financial Protection Data
Authentication, settlement and protection evidence held against the booking for audit and regulator queries.
Explore
More on compliance and protection.
Real-world context from the felloh team and customers, written for travel finance and operations.
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Connect the dots.
See how payments, settlement, refunds and reporting evidence connect around every booking.