Case Study

TravelPass Group

INDUSTRY: Travel
REGION: North America

The problem

TravelPass Group had to work with two separate and disjointed payment systems — one for accepting payments and another for issuing payments. In addition, TravelPass had merchant accounts with monthly limits that weren’t sufficient to meet their needs.

The solution

ConnexPay’s platform provides TravelPass with real-time access to incoming customer funds that can be used to immediately issue corresponding supplier payments, all inside a single platform with one reconciliation and unified reporting.

“The virtual card rebates we receive with ConnexPay greatly exceed any rebates we had with previous providers, which truly improves our bottom line.”

James Hall, CFO
TravelPass Group

“ConnexPay is the lowest-cost merchant provider we’ve ever had.”

Brandon Nielsen, Controller
TravelPass Group

About TravelPass Group =

TravelPass Group is a leading travel industry technology company with operations in nine countries around the world. The TravelPass marketplace empowers hotels and partners to maximize distribution while helping travelers find more choices and great rates. With more than 10,000 room nights booked each day, TravelPass Group uses data insights to help hotels identify evolving travel needs and attract in-market customers. The TravelPass algorithms do the heavy lifting behind the scenes to find the lowest available rates for consumers and provide visibility into how customers shop.

TravelPass Group companies include Reservation Counter and Reservation Desk.

Enter ConnexPay =

Prior to implementing the ConnexPay solution, TravelPass Group had a multi-year payments contract with a global financial services provider, which required TravelPass to integrate with three separate companies and systems to accept payments from customers and issue payments to suppliers. In addition, TravelPass had to wait two to three days for access to any reporting on virtual payments — and those reports were completely disjointed and difficult to reconcile.

“The technology with other payments providers is terrible. It’s so out of date,” said James Hall, Chief Financial Officer at TravelPass Group.“To have a modern solution like ConnexPay helps us be much more efficient.”

With their previous merchant providers, TravelPass also had an extremely high cost of accepting payments. But that quickly changed once they teamed up with ConnexPay.

“Banks charge such high merchant fees to offset their risks associated with the travel industry, some as high as 7% or 8%, so we didn’t want to be merchant of record,” Hall added. “But with ConnexPay, our merchant fees are under 3%, which saves us a ton of money each month, and we have unlimited volume with no reserves.”

ConnexPay’s consolidated solution allows TravelPass to simultaneously accept and issue payments through APIs.

Here’s how it works =

1

Accept
Payments

Accept customer payments (pay in)

2

Run Fraud
Analysis

Run fraud analysis with AI & dynamic rules for payments

3

Receive
Authorization

Customer payments are authorized & funds immediately available

4

Pay
Suppliers

Generate real-time payments to suppliers (pay out)

5

Get
Profit

Funds are used for issuing future payments, or you can request that funds are deposited into your checking account

Real-Time Process

“With ConnexPay’s solution, when we want to research a transaction, the sale and purchase information is all right there tied to the same order ID,” said Brandon Nielsen, Controller at TravelPass Group. “It’s just awesome. We use that tool every day, many times a day. I’m so impressed with the user interface ConnexPay created.”

Here’s how it works =

1

Accept Payments

Accept customer payments
(the sale)

2

Run Fraud Analysis

Run fraud analysis with AI & dynamic rules for payments

3

Receive Authorization

Customer payments are authorized & funds immediately available

4

Pay Suppliers

Generate real-time payments to suppliers
(the purchase)

Real-Time Process

5

Get Profit

Funds are used for issuing future payments, or you can request that funds are deposited into your checking account

The implementation process =

Once TravelPass made the decision to switch to ConnexPay for accepting and issuing payments, the implementation process was smooth and took less time than anticipated.

“Implementation wasn’t a heavy lift for our team,” Hall commented. “In fact, we only had one developer on our side working on it, and ConnexPay was very responsive anytime he had a question.”

TravelPass wondered, however, if they would see the same level of customer service and responsiveness beyond the implementation process.

“Sometimes companies tend to go silent after implementation, but not ConnexPay,” Nielsen added. “Their customer service is very impressive. We like being connected through Slack, and we always get responses very quickly from the ConnexPay team.”

Integrated fraud solution =

ConnexPay’s platform includes an integrated state-of-the-art fraud solution through Kount, an Equifax company, which analyzes and scores each incoming transaction for fraud insights before clearing it for processing.

“Having Kount’s fraud solution included in the ConnexPay solution at no additional cost is a big deal,” Hall said. “For years, we’d been looking for ways to reduce chargebacks, and Kount is the fraud solution we needed.”

Fraud and chargebacks vary by industry, and incidents tend to be higher in the travel sector — which makes the seamless Kount integration all the more valuable for companies like TravelPass.

“Kount allows us to set rules based on trends we see with potential fraudsters, and we’re able to stop them before they have a chance to book multiple transactions,” added Nielsen. “Plus the insights that come from Kount are amazing.”

A payments partnership =

ConnexPay’s product enhancements stem directly from the needs and feedback provided by its clients.

“ConnexPay is genuinely interested in helping us expand our business and improve their product to better serve us,” Hall said. “I’m impressed with their desire to help us grow.”

And, unlike other technology providers that TravelPass has worked with in the past, the relationship with ConnexPay has been seamless from day one.

“We haven’t had any technical hiccups with ConnexPay,” Hall added. “We’ve never had an API break at all, and we’ve never had any downtime with the ConnexPay solution. It’s so reliable — best in class.”

About ConnexPay =

ConnexPay is the first and only company to bring together the two sides of the payment process — payments acceptance and virtual payments issuing — into a single platform with one contract and one reconciliation. The flexibility of this technology allows clients to adopt the full end-to-end acquiring and issuing solution or leverage ConnexPay’s innovative intelligent routing issuing-only platform.

The company’s technology simplifies an antiquated workflow, eliminates the need for pre-funded accounts, reduces supplier risk and the cost of accepting card payments while safeguarding consumer spend.

Founded in 2017, ConnexPay is an industry leader in payments for industries historically viewed as high risk to payment providers.

Learn how ConnexPay can solve your payments challenges by getting in touch with us today.

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