Hi Mark

This is a tricky one.

I assume that the reservations you are referring to are coming from the GDS systems. The challenge here is that a single IATA number can have access to multiple rates, and at the same time provide a variety of payment instructions.

Most of my client properties deal with this manually, as there is no real solution. 

The same challenge exists when a GDS reservation has a credit card for Guarantee purposes, and the client pays with another card. If you are not carefull with your payment automation, you can end up charging the GTD card, which then becomes an administrativ nightmare,

A work around could be to explore the integration to Nordic Travel Clearing eVoucher, which could probably help automate some of these payments.

No specific answer here because of the complexity.

I hope I provide a minimum of inspiration.

Nikolas

Thanks, Nikolas. The reason I asked is that I noticed Mews automatically distinguishes a virtual card from other cards by marking it as 'virtual,' so some kind of common denominator exists that makes it systematically possible to recognize and separate them. We do have some GDS bookings where we know 100% by the price rate that it is indeed a virtual card, but others are not as clear. We already use e-vouchers successfully and have this integrated, which is such a help. Thanks again for your input, and have a lovely day!

Hello!

Actually I think that this works out of the box, but not exactly the way it used to do it until September 2024.

We have setup this policy:

together with this billing automation:

For Expedia for example, it works, but the payment is scheduled for arrival date instead of right away, because of.. reasons (aka some properties had expedia prepaid rates where funds where not available at the time of booking, causing payments to fail). 

Mews internally recognizes virtual cards and treats it as “Prepaid in online travel agency (OTA)” in billing automation.

But I am not sure if that works for you.

Additionally, in theory ChannelManagers are able to send activation dates for virtual credit cards, if the OTA provides that data. In the XML standard that is used to exchange information that is possible, but far from all OTAs and CM do support this. If so that would allow MEWS to more effectively charge VVCs autoamtically avoiding charging them before activation. So everone, ask your CM and OTA to support that standard! Maybe if enough properties ask for it, they will implement it (and by the way, ask them to send phone numbers in proper international format +xx ;-) )

Regards,

JP.

Thank you so much for your reply! I really appreciate it.

For us as a Best Western member hotel, I can usually see from the rate code whether it is Prepaid NRF or not. At our property, Booking.com bookings are always chargeable immediately after booking, while Expedia is only chargeable on the day of arrival. So, we will set up Payment Automations based on unique rate codes, and I assume this will work well.

It is more complicated with, for example, Egencia, where the same rate code is used regardless of whether it’s a virtual card, the agency’s card as a guarantee, or the guest’s own card. In my experience, trying to get OTAs to change their mapping is unfortunately impossible. I’ve also struggled with GDS—trying to get phone numbers not only in the correct format but included at all. Often we don’t receive them, or we just get the agency’s phone number instead of the guest’s.

From my experience, trying to sort these things out is really a mission impossible.