Ingenico’s TravelHub Means New Mobile Payments-Style Alternative For Travel Companies
Before the internet, working with a travel agent when vacationing was definitely a better alternative; my family once took two trips to the Mall of America, one with a travel agent’s help and one without. You can figure out from there which one went better.
When the internet kicked in, though, that changed a lot of things, and travel agents don’t have so much punch as the ability to conduct research about your potential destination from your own home can provide. Travel agents have thus had to innovate to stay in the game, and Ingenico Group recently dropped word about its new mobile payments-style solution, TravelHub.
TravelHub gives travel companies—including travel agents—a whole new range of options when it comes to accepting payments. It allows for over 150 different methods to be used, including credit cards as what is described as “alternative payment solutions,” probably including, once again, mobile payments. It also makes currency translations a breeze, using “smart transaction routing capabilities” to yield the best possible exchange rates when the transaction is made.
TravelHub also plays well with a range of airline global distribution systems (GDS), including Sabre, Amadeus and Navitaire, as well as hotel property management systems, ensuring that the necessary connections are made smoothly and effectively. It’s already quite well-received; Viva Air’s chief information officer and chief projects officer Kevin Weber noted that it’s allowed for an increase in both authorization rates and revenue overall.
We all know that mobile payments have long had a major problem in security because no matter how much it improves, people are always still skeptical of that improvement. One other major problem is use cases; while Samsung Pay can go just about anywhere a credit card can, many other tools don’t enjoy this level of versatility. Just try to pay for gas with your PayPal account at a lot of places. A system like Ingenico’s can go a long way toward making mobile payments do more, and that helps improve the likelihood of them going truly mainstream.
This is one more step forward for the field, and that’s always a welcome development. More use cases in mobile payments just help improve the chances that people will actually use these tools.