Conferma to digitise travel payments through WALLET feature

Conferma aims to digitise recurring and regular travel payments more cheaply through its new WALLET innovation. The global FinTech company’s Conferma WALLET is a payment service that stores prepaid funds to allow for fee reductions, real time transactions, automatic updates … Continue reading →

Conferma aims to digitise recurring and regular travel payments more cheaply through its new WALLET innovation.

The global FinTech company’s Conferma WALLET is a payment service that stores prepaid funds to allow for fee reductions, real time transactions, automatic updates and reconciliation in a bid to build greater efficiencies.

It says the feature is a cost effective arrangement for travel management companies (TMCs) that allows instant payment for air, rail, card rental and other types of corporate travel services.

Conferma connects issuers to more than 400 travel management companies, five global distribution systems and more than 70 corporate booking tools. It is fully integrated with major card schemes and serves more than 30 banking partners, who have issued Conferma-generated virtual cards in 96 currencies across 197 countries.

Simon Barker, CEO and founder of Conferma said: “Conferma WALLET is a closed-loop payment process enabling TMCs and airline ticket distributors in particular to deposit a large amount of funds with airlines. The airline subsequently utilises the prefunded account to issue tickets but does by avoiding all merchant cost fees, resulting in a significant cost reduction.

“This solution avoids the costs of credit card interchange altogether, as well as providing greater access to information via the global distribution systems and airline ticket distributors. This is an additional service that was often prohibited due to the cost of distribution, hence makes for a very attractive solution to the lower cost carriers.”

Sabre has adopted Conferma’s new technology within its GDS.

Jay Jones, senior vice president for Sabre Travel Network in the Americas said: “This new technology enables all of our GDS subscribers worldwide to efficiently shop, book and manage travel for valuable content not previously available in the Sabre marketplace, and is proving to be highly successful.”

Conferma WALLET will be launched in all 197 countries in which it operates.