As a travel professional and seller of travel, part of your duties and responsibilities is to accept and process payments from your clients toward their desired vacations. When you do that, you have the obligation to guard against fraud and to protect your clients’ payment information while within your possession.
To help you process credit card payments, here are 5 tips (plus 4 bonus tips) taken from The Travel Institute’s Certified Travel Associate (CTA) Module Accepting and Processing Payments.
DO:
1. Use Credit Card Authorization forms in which the client signs off on the transaction.
2. Ask the client for:
Credit card number
Expiration date
Security code
Billing address, including zip code
Name as it appears on the card.
3. Enter this information directly into the supplier’s reservation system platform or your agency’s back-office system and merchant account software. Some suppliers offer payment gateway systems that allow clients to make payments directly to the vendor.
4. Explain the agency’s and the supplier’s terms and conditions very clearly, especially all non-refundable policies, and include your legal disclosures in all of your communications. The most common reason for chargebacks and disputes is that the customer says he or she did not understand the terms of sale. Your agency should post
policies and conditions in an obvious place in the office or online and also give the client a written or emailed copy of the policies. Consult with a legal expert to help you draft your terms and conditions.
5. Create and send a reservation form or invoice, including the date, the sales amount, a description of the purchase and all line items, along with the booking agent’s initials. The more details the better. For example, in the description, you could write that the purchase is for an airline flight on KLM Airlines to Amsterdam on a certain date. Each agency or host agency may have policies on what details to include in an invoice. Additionally, you must take extra care with any documents you print for clients that include their form of payment. In particular, any document that includes a credit card number must be masked, with the exception of the last four digits.
DON’T:
1. Write the credit card number on a piece of paper of any sort, not even if you think you will shred it.
2. Draft your own terms, conditions, waivers, or disclosures without consulting your legal and accounting teams.
3. Use this credit card number on any future purchases without the client’s full permission.
4. Store a credit card number on file if it’s not in an encrypted server. NOTE: Under no circumstances is an advisor allowed to store the CVV (security code) in any format, regardless of the use of an encrypted server.
