The Open Payment Alliance (OPA) Early Adopters Program continues to attract leading firms in the travel industry. After the success of the first edition, with the participation of 20 companies, Palladium Hotel Group and Grupo Hotusa are now the first to join the Early Adopters Program 2.0. This second edition will likewise be sponsored by Mastercard.
Palladium and Hotusa are now among the pioneering group of companies in the industry that will soon begin to use the B2B payments standard defined by the Open Payment Alliance. To that end, both companies will develop their connections with the baVel Payment Manager, the first functional Payment Manager on the market. Once the technical connections have been completed, both companies will start managing optimized payment instructions.
Palladium and Hotusa will thus join the companies in the first Early Adopters program: Methabook, TUI Iberia, 3FullStep, Grupo CDV, Odeon Tours, CN Travel, SHL, World Destination, Webbeds, Protel, Prestige, Bentour Reisen, Hoist Group, Caribbean Atlas, Juniper, Nixi, Hoteldo and MTS Globe.
Benefits of the Open Payment Alliance
The Open Payment Alliance sets a new specific standard for the travel industry, with the aim of solving one of the biggest difficulties in the business: B2B payments. In general, businesses in the industry have put substantial resources into improving processes related to the end customer. However, the back-office processes are still highly manual. Consequently, errors, discrepancies and chargebacks are very common.
The OPA proposes creating a new channel, decoupled from the reservation channel, to manage all payments through the Payment Manager, equivalent to the Channel Manager in the reservation channel.
The benefits of adopting this new B2B payment channel are manifold for both suppliers and purchasers:
- A specific channel guaranteeing execution of all terms agreed in a payment instruction—method of payment, currency, moment of collection, etc.
- Automation, optimization, traceability and transparency throughout the process.
- Reduced manual work in administration.
- Greater scalability of the business.
- Different forms of payment, according to the supplier’s and the client’s needs. Access to different payment partners through one single integration.
- Automatic settlement and billback.
- PCI Compliance. Legal compliance in all countries where the company operates.
For travel suppliers such as Palladium and Hotusa, the benefits of adopting the OPA have been heightened in 2020. Amid the crisis caused by the coronavirus, insurance companies have quickly withdrawn credit from all operations in the industry. Consequently, hotels and other tourist suppliers have had to run the risk of non-payment. The OPA allows risk to be shared among all the members of the value chain through the traceability and transparency of the entire process.
Early Adopters Program 2.0.
The Early Adopters Program 2.0 remains open to all businesses that wish to innovate in their payment processes. Any companies that take part in this edition will benefit from a discount on integration costs.
For further information, please write to us at [email protected] or click here. Your Voxel contact person will also be pleased to help.
