The introduction of Payment Manager in the sector and consequently, the adoption of the standards set by the Open Payment Alliance, will entail a paradigm shift in terms of innovation, digitization and automation of B2B payment processes in the industry. This is how it has been described by important associations in the sector such as HEDNA and HTNG, who have been the promoters of OPA.
Technology in the distribution channel and in the payments channel
Over the past decades, distribution in the travel sector has grown exponentially, which has resulted in the appearance of new actors and intermediaries. This growth has been possible thanks primarily to three key technologies: the Internet, VCCs and Channel Managers. However, the managing and distribution of B2B payments has not evolved at the same pace and the process to manage these is currently highly manual, complex, inefficient and a source of errors and losses for companies in the sector. In fact, in the current scenario, payment processing costs can have an impact of up to 5% of a hotel's revenue, according to data provided by Voxel.
Open Payment Alliance proposes a new channel that is different from the reservations channel and which allows channeling a flow of payments from start to finish in a manner that is optimized, without frictions and adapted to the specific needs of companies in the travel sector. In this sense, Voxel has developed baVel Payment Manager, the first Payment Manager on the market, which, in addition to implementing the standards set by the Open Payment Alliance, adds new modules that can be used by travel companies to automatically process payments while also benefiting from other innovations. These modules are: omni-channel connectivity with GDSs, Channel Managers, etc.; a decision engine for automatically selecting the best payments supplier and automatically executing the payment process; a virtual payments hub with more than a dozen payment suppliers; the safe distribution of payments and value added services such as invoice recovery, FX, automatic reconciliation, etc. baVel’s Payment Manager has passed the first concept tests and is currently being used by a dozen companies such as Palladium, Hotusa, MTS Globe, TUI Iberia...
