Payments in the travel sector: safety is experience for tourists

Today we can all see the positive effects on the customer protection produced by the Payment Service Directive (PSD, Directive 2007/64/EC), which also contributed to the development of Alternative Payment Methods (APM), such as PayPal, AmazonPay, WePay, 2Checkout, … just to mention a few of them. The following PSD2, Directive EU 2015/2366, contributed to create an integrated payment market, safer at a European level, with a specific attention to online payments, also considering the growth of mobile usage.

Ecommerce Foundation realised the Ecommerce Report 2019, highlighting how the B2C e-commerce generated a 547 billion euros turnover in 2018 – increasing by 12% compared to 2017.
The report also underlines the growth of mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, and the important role of PayPal as preferred payment method both for goods and services.
The most “active” target is the +65 one, particularly for Northern and Western Europe.

In the travel sector, Spain is shown to be the most profitable market in the e-commerce sector, according to the Nielsen’s Global Connected Commerce report.

According to 4Hoteliers, in 2019 the APMs in the travel sector passed the use of traditional methods: this trend is expected to intensify in 2020, also in those markets which are still characterised by the payment cards, becoming less preferred by the younger targets.
It is also foreseen that the cards themselves will be subject to change, becoming more digital, virtual, accessible and safer. The frictionless payment concept goes hand in hand with this: an easy payment experience, also intuitive and transparent, made up by at most a couple of clicks, on the favourite device, a transparent exchange rate and quicker anti-fraud checks.

At Twissen we observed that the seamless booking experience is complementing with a frictionless payment, enhancing the travel experience, in any phase – from the airport to the hotel room. Collecting datas and users’ preferences is going to be fundamental in order to define the best payment method for each target.

Martina Baldo

She graduated in Intercultural Development of Tourism Systems and she has a passion for foreign languages and cultures. Since 2016 she works as administration and tourism project manager at Twissen.