Travolution Connects 2026: Marketplaces get the memo that payments matter

Legacy tech infrastructure still remains a risk

Optimised payment flows are becoming a non-negotiable part of the new travel tech stack, with marketplaces increasingly interested in payments, according to panellists at last week’s Travolution Connects.

Paul Batchelor from global payment and treasury management solution, Sunrate, told attendees: “From a payments perspective, we're working with a lot more marketplaces now. They're much more involved in the payment flow than before and they're seeing it as an opportunity in capitalisation.

“They've got the content, they've got the distribution, they've got the booking platform and they might as well add the payment flow because it's another area that they can commercialise and enhance the data to make the overall experience more efficient,” he said.

Batchelor was giving his B2B perspective “who owns the customer”, suggesting that inconsistencies between sellers and suppliers, arising from sub-optimal payment processes – could impact the traveler experience.” 

"If your funds coming in are not matching up with the funds going out, or you've got exchanges in the middle, or if you're not optimising the flow, it's all going to have an impact on the end supplier.”

Fellow panellist Will Plummer from Trust My Group and Repayd took a more literal approach to who owns the customer. “Follow the money,” he said, explaining, “there are lots of different players that make this all up, but who's actually controlling the money flow and the customer relationship is the most important.”

He used OTAs as an example. “You've seen it over the last 10 years with the power of the OTAs, the product they've been able to offer, the marketing they're able to put out there. They've controlled that inventory, they've controlled the tech stack, and they've also controlled that payment flow.”

In a separate session talking about the new tech stack, Oliver Fellowes from B2B cross-border payments specialist PingPong reminded attendees that payments should be “embedded from the outset, the design phase, rather than kind of an afterthought that's plugged in at the end.

“I've seen travel companies in particular, but organizations from a number of different verticals, make that mistake,” he said, revealing that travel businesses can be resistant o taking an API-led product.

“We still have customers asking us to stand up SFTP solutions, for example, so they can do their reporting in the same way they've been doing for the past 10, 15 years” he said. 

Legacy infrastructure in the era of AI is a common talking point across most travel tech discussions, with Plummer revealing concerns about risk. 

“From a payments perspective, this is an industry where we've always had problems with fraud. We've always had chargeback protection, but I rant about this a lot. This was a program that was invented in the 1970s that hasn't really progressed. 

“It can't even cope with human interactions on payments. It's not designed for machines, I worry what's ahead,” he said.

Back to the other panel, where Gemma Timmons from OAG did her payment peers a favour, identifying payments as one of the four pillars of how she sees the new tech stack. 

“The single most important objective is to bring value to the traveler” she said. “That is absolutely a non-negotiable, along with four others - interconnected data, interoperability of systems, shared identity understanding and a seamless booking payment journey for the customer.”