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Abacus, Asia’s leading provider of travel solutions and services, announced that Abacus-connected travel agents can benefit from a safer and wider choice of payment options that will energise sales, thanks to a new partnership agreement with AsiaPay Limited, a leader in Internet Payment Services.
With this partnership, Abacus-connected agencies can expand both their walk-in, call-in and online business with AsiaPay’s suite of advanced electronic payment and fraud prevention solutions, all within a 3D-secure and Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCIDSS) compliant environment, the payment industry’s highest level of data security.
Agencies will be able to offer a variety of payment choices to their online & offline customers globally, covering credit and debit cards, and other well accepted payment methods. With 3D-secure payment processing, online agencies will further reduce their risk exposure of accepting card payments. Alarmingly, 60% of online merchants in a recent SagePay global survey were unsure if their payment partner was PCIDSS compliant, as many service providers are neither compliant nor certified.
Mr. Brett Henry, Vice President Marketing, Abacus International, said the combined regional expertise and local knowledge of the two leading Asian companies would bring valuable benefits to the travel industry’s payments security. “Secure, convenient and cost-effective payment facilities are the biggest challenge faced by online merchants, especially traditional merchants who are entering the online market for the first time. Those agents who are unfamiliar with the dynamics of fraud, and their customers’ online payment behaviours are easy targets for fraudsters,” Mr. Henry said.
Today, the travel industry has lost about USD1.5 billion dollars to online payment fraud, and this trend is rising at double digit pace annually. Mr. Henry continued, “This partnership will assist agencies to grow their revenue domestically, regionally, and internationally by enabling travel merchants to offer card-and non-card-based payment options to their customers. In turn, this will significantly improve an agency’s ability to serve a segment of customers who do not own cards or bank accounts, for example, the three million GCASH users in Philippines.”
AsiaPay’s suite of solutions will enable agencies to capture payments securely via email, call center, walk-in, online portal, and mobile (in select markets). A recent study by CyberSource indicates that merchants that offer a range of the right payment options across sales channels and currencies have proven to increase sales by an average of 14 per cent.
AsiaPay CEO, Mr. Joseph Chan, said AsiaPay’s virtual Payment Point-of-Sale (POS) is a real-time, secure, premium service offering. “This solution enables travel consultants to capture payment and fulfill a sale immediately rather than transferring the task to the mid-or back-office (MBO) function and waiting for confirmation.”
Mr. Chan continued, “Travel providers and other industry merchants have seen improved internal credit card security, and increased sales, without additional monthly POS hardware or communications costs. In addition, through our partnership with Abacus, we are not charging seat license fees or limiting the number of virtual POS that an agency deploys.”
To make it more convenient for agencies, Abacus has also integrated AsiaPay’s fraud detection and prevention services, and payment services into Abacus PowerConnect and Abacus WebStart 2.0. By employing Abacus PowerConnect and/or Abacus Webstart, agencies that subscribe to AsiaPay will start to enjoy the benefits of a highly secured payment service.
Mr. Henry added that the integration will save agencies the thousands of dollars it costs to develop and incorporate payment services into their website. “Not to mention, it is near impossible to have your MBO provider enable such a service in the agency workflow.”
Mr. Chan added, “Our leading technology, expertise and strong local service support in Asia and China will provide agents with the peace of mind to continue to focus on growing their business and leveraging the benefits that comes with gaining access to new global markets and payment types via one convenient source.”
Theodore is the Co-Founder and Managing Editor of TravelDailyNews Media Network; his responsibilities include business development and planning for TravelDailyNews long-term opportunities.
