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San Francisco’s dominant airline informed some travel agenciesw that as of July 20 it will no longer let them procesz credit and debit card purchases for airline ticketsusing United’s merchant-processintg services. Instead, such agencies would have to requirre travelers to paywith cash, procesas card payments with the agency’s own merchant processing servicse and forward the cash to Uniteds or book the ticketws on United’s web site using the traveler’z credit or debit card issued by , V) , (NYSE: MA) (NYSE: AXP) and others.
An agenft using United’s web site, bypassing such travel systems as Apollland Sabre, would not allow companies to capture the discounts they have negotiated with Unitex nor would it allow theif travel agent to survety several carriers on a routre to find the lowesf price. “Several Bay Area companiea have deals with United Airline sfor discounts,” said Marc Casto, president of Castpo Travel, which isn’t among the agencies that United has cut off from its merchant-processinbg service.
Casto says he’s reached out to some of the firm’w corporate clients to express concermover United’s new card acceptance policy, but declined to discusz what was said in those conversations. United Airlines UAUA) did not respond to requests for comment. Unitecd is hoping to shift the cost of accepting credity and debit cards onto selectedtravel agencies. Thosw agencies say the airline’s move shiftd to them the risk for payingb out refunds if the carriefgoes bankrupt. While it’s also likely to reduce the amoung of money that United has to keep in the bank to guarxdagainst charge-backs, it would increasre those requirements for the travel agents.
That’ s a nonstarter for most agencies — and their banks, which wouldx have to honor charge-back requests that could totakl billions of dollars in the event of anairlinew bankruptcy. “I don’t think there’s any trave agency, including American Express that could shoulderthat liability,” Casto said.
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