Outdated payments processes don’t just hurt your finances though. COVID cancellations, the war in Ukraine, and perhaps more recently ‘air chaos’ cancellations, have all created cancellations volatility for those with unautomated payments systems.
Inflation rates are slowly creeping up around the world and the consensus from economists is that we´ll see more increases still. Meanwhile a great many travel businesses still have significant debts to repay because of COVID.
In such an environment one of the easiest ways to ease financial pressure is to get paid more promptly, thus reducing the need for credit.
Sadly many travel businesses are waiting 60 days or more to collect payments – even though the technology exists to resolve the problem.
Why is this happening? Far too many are stuck on 1970s legacy systems to collect payments. Often this includes via old-fashioned physical credit card payments andtraditional bank transfers.
This is simply ridiculous. By all means pressure partners to pay quicker, but the secret to fast collection ultimately lies with a mixture of automated processes and use of virtual credit card payments (‘VCCs’ as many called them).
You not only get paid more quickly, you speed up processes, have complete visibility of all transactions, ensure everything is easily controllable and remove the reconciliations headache.
Outdated payments processes don’t just hurt your finances though. COVID cancellations, the war in Ukraine, and perhaps more recently ‘air chaos’ cancellations, have all created cancellations volatility for those with unautomated payments systems.
If these weren’t enough to make many digitize and modernize their back-office payment processes, then perhaps the rise in interest rates might prove the decisive factor.
We’ve lived through an unprecedented period of low interest rates but who is to say they won’t return to the 16% peak we saw in the 1980s? High inflation currently makes this a real threat, so take these simple steps today to save your business from potential ruin tomorrow.
Spencer Hanlon, Head of Travel for payments specialist Nium.
