Singapore-based digital travel platform Agoda expanded its partnership with Mastercard to enhance B2B payments within the travel and tourism industry.
The collaboration aims to address the increasing digitalization of the sector and streamline transactions between digital travel platforms, hotels, airlines, suppliers and vendors globally, the companies said in a press release emailed to PYMNTS.
The travel industry has relied on manual and time-consuming processes such as paper invoices for their commercial payments, according to the release. However, with the rise of digitalization, there is a need to update these payment systems. The partnership between Agoda and Mastercard aims to revolutionize the way digital travel platforms engage with their partners and modernize payment processes.
“Mastercard has been longtime partners with Agoda and is proud to expand on this decade-long partnership that harnesses the power of collaboration to simplify B2B payments and fortify defenses against fraud, all while enhancing the customer experience and fostering greater loyalty,” Yunsok Chang, executive vice president, market development, Asia Pacific, at Mastercard, said, according to the release.
Digital travel platforms account for approximately 40% of global travel bookings, the release said, citing data from the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA). These platforms play a vital role for airlines, hotels, tour operators, railways, cruise lines and other partners.
“Recognizing the challenges posed by outdated payment processes, our collaboration aims to revolutionize the way digital travel platforms engage with hotels, airlines, suppliers and vendors worldwide,” Mai-Linh Bui, chief financial officer at Agoda, said.
PYMNTS Intelligence has found that the management and execution of B2B payments between merchants and end-providers of services in the travel and tourism sectors can be very complex.
As a result, 20% of travel and tourism businesses said B2B payments are a very or extremely significant pain point, and another 43% said they are a somewhat significant pain point, according to the “Smart Receivables Playbook,” a PYMNTS and Flywire collaboration.
In order to create products that better appeal to businesses and their internal decision-makers, airlines and provider platforms are increasingly taking their cues from what consumers want, Corcentric CEO Matt Clark told PYMNTS in June.
“You don’t have to look much further than B2C today for the future of B2B tomorrow, when it comes to things like efficiency and digitization,” Clark said.
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