Travel Agency Visa & Mastercard Merchant Accounts
Merchant Account for Travel Agencies, Discount Clubs, Membership Clubs, Timeshare Clubs. Adding the convenience of multiple payment options is more of a necessity today than an additional feature. So, businesses big and small would have to rely on the most trusted merchant account providers to get their account opened. But this is not going to be cheap. And if the business happens to fall in the categories that are considered to be high risk by the common account providers the task gets a bit tougher. But this should not discourage the business owners because we now have high risk merchant account providers who focus especially on such clients that are not approved by the conventional sources.
Online Payment Processing for MOTO Travel Company
Travel industry in particular would be able to benefit a lot from online payments. There are even some online travel merchants who operate their business without any brick and mortar stores. These come with convenient iPhone/Android Mobile Apps which can be used to instantly book a tour, stay, travel tickets and lots more. Why travel agencies are denied merchant accounts by most credit card processors?
- Any industry that is known to have large chargebacks would automatically be pushed to the high risk category. So, be it a travel club or discount club, travel brokers, travel membership businesses, hotel booking and all other categories in the travel agency industry fall in the high risk category. Stays and tours are booked in advance. Sometimes these would even be months ahead of the actual date. Payments made in advance would also have to be refunded either in parts or full amount when the customer cancels the trip, based on the period when the customer cancels it. This would result in large chargebacks which the normal credit card processors would not be ready to bear. But this would not mean that the payment processing would have to be made a whole lot tougher. The travel business can simply approach a high risk merchant account provider. Choosing one with multiple underwriting banks would be even better. Before finalizing a provider remember to compare the ACH Processing/Check Processing limits. There are some that allow you to increase the cap in just a few months after your business is up and running. These would be great to help you scale your business.
- One other reason that makes the travel business high risk is that it is something that is easily impacted by a large number of external factors including the weather conditions, political situation and more.
- Travel business is also known for a lot of fraudulent activities. The chargebacks would have to be taken up by the processing bank and they would be responsible to pay the customer back in this situation.
- Considering all the above situations most of the common credit card processors would simply deny processing the application for a travel business. Sometimes after the application process the banks might simply take a lot of time to do a background check or even end up rejecting the application.
Friendly For Startups and New Companies
Irrespective of the industry the business belongs to, a startup/business that has just been launched or about to be launched would be a risky bet. Without any credit history information to study the credit card processor would not have anything to establish the credibility of the business and the timely payments. So, choosing a high risk merchant who knows the actual difficulties and differences in High Risk vs Low Risk businesses and knows to handle them all equally well, would be the best option. These often might come with no set up fees. Also look for the option of an easy to use virtual terminal and an easy application process. This would save you time and money.
