Book cover: Travel Payments Explained by Mathieu Montmessin

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Publishes 6 October 2026. 149 pages, 6 x 9 in. Kindle, paperback and hardcover.

Travel Payments Explained is a 149-page book about how money actually moves through a travel business: who is the merchant of record, how the money arrives, how much of it is lost on the way, and how long it takes. It covers the agency and merchant models, BSP cash and card sales, acquiring, multi-acquirer setups, orchestration, fraud and disputes, alternative payment methods, virtual cards, FX, refunds and disruption, reconciliation and leakage, and running payments as a function. It was published on 6 October 2026 and ends with a forty-item Travel Payments Health Check.

Why are travel payments different from other payments?

Six things make travel unusual and all six of them are in chapter 1. The values are high and the margins are thin, so a payment cost that looks small in percentage terms is large against the margin. You sell a promise rather than a product, which is what makes the card schemes treat the sector as risky. There is a chain of intermediaries, so the person who takes the money is rarely the person who provides the service.

Then two sets of rules apply at once, the card schemes' and IATA's. Nearly everything crosses a border and a currency. And the money arrives long before the cost is incurred, which makes the working capital picture flattering right up until it is not.

What does a card payment actually cost an airline?

Chapter 4 takes the question apart line by line: interchange, scheme fees, the acquirer's margin, the parts nobody quotes, and the difference between the rate you negotiated and the rate you pay. Chapter 3 does the same for card sales that come through the BSP, which behave differently and are often measured worse.

For the industry as a whole, IATA and Edgar Dunn's own figures published in August 2026 put the cost of moving money at about 22.2 billion dollars on roughly 977 billion dollars processed, which is 2.27 percent. My own feeling is that the more useful number is always your own, which is why the method is in the book rather than just the figure.

Is approval rate more important than cost?

Usually, yes, and chapter 4 makes the case with the arithmetic. A basis point saved on acceptance cost is worth something. A percentage point gained on approval rate is worth an order of magnitude more, because the alternative to an approved payment is not a cheaper payment, it is no sale.

This is the single most common thing I see get the wrong weight in a payment tender, so the chapter gives you the numbers to take into one.

What is payment orchestration, and do you need it?

Chapter 6 covers what orchestration is, what it is not, and the tokenisation question underneath it, which is the part that decides how easily you can leave. It ends with an honest view of when you need one and when you do not, because plenty of travel businesses do not.

I work in this market, so I have made the conflict explicit in the book rather than writing around it.

What is the Travel Payments Health Check?

Forty scored questions on your own payment setup, grouped by the chapters they come from, with result bands and a score card. It takes about half an hour and it tends to find the same two or three things: nobody owns FX, reconciliation is a monthly rescue rather than a process, and the refund path was never rehearsed.

The fillable PDF is free on this site and needs nothing else.

What is in the book

  1. Why Travel Payments Are Different

    • High values, thin margins
    • You sell a promise, not a product
    • The chain of intermediaries
    • Two sets of rules at the same time
    • Everything crosses borders and currencies
    • Seasonality and the working capital machine
    • The cast of characters
    • Why this book exists

  2. Agency Versus Merchant Model

    • What merchant of record actually means
    • The agency model
    • The merchant model
    • The composite scenario: same seat, two worlds
    • Hybrids, where the models blur
    • The regulatory line underneath the commercial one
    • Cash timing: the underrated part
    • Which model should you want?

  3. BSP Cash and Card Sales

    • The BSP in one page
    • Cash sales: the quiet giant
    • Card sales: how the money and the risk actually flow
    • A composite scenario: the ticketing farm
    • The economics, side by side
    • The GDS card and the data problem
    • Numbers worth knowing
    • What airlines can actually do

  4. Direct Card Sales and Acquiring

    • What a card payment actually costs
    • The authorisation journey, briefly
    • A word on Amex and the rest
    • Approval rate: the metric worth more than cost
    • Single-acquirer risk
    • How to buy acquiring well

  5. Multi-Acquirer Setups

    • Why merchants go multi-acquirer
    • What it actually costs
    • Routing: where the value lives
    • The procurement dynamics of running two
    • Collateral across two relationships
    • The refund memory problem
    • A composite scenario: the failover that wasn’t
    • Making the decision

  6. Orchestration Platforms

    • What orchestration actually is
    • What orchestration does not do
    • Tokenisation: the quiet lock-in question
    • A composite scenario: the quarter that justified the fee
    • The market will consolidate under you
    • Orchestrating more than cards
    • When you need one, and when you do not
    • Buying it well

  7. Fraud and Disputes in Travel

    • Why good travellers look like fraudsters
    • The travel fraud taxonomy
    • Running fraud prevention at travel margins
    • The manual review desk, and what it should really do
    • Chargeback economics, precisely
    • Disputes: the machinery
    • A composite scenario: the disruption spiral

  8. Alternative Payment Methods

    • Wallets
    • Bank rails
    • Instalments and deferred payment
    • Cash, vouchers and the long tail
    • B2B rails
    • A composite scenario: the checkout that paid for itself
    • Payment methods as a risk portfolio
    • Choosing a portfolio

  9. Virtual Cards

    • What a virtual card is
    • Why payers love them, beyond the rebate
    • What the merchant actually gets
    • The decision framework
    • The mechanics of receiving one, done well
    • Where the instrument goes next
    • A composite scenario: the channel-shift surprise

  10. FX and Multi-Currency

    • Where FX enters a travel business
    • Like-for-like settlement
    • The surcharge-currency interaction
    • DCC: the conversion I would not offer
    • Pricing in twenty currencies without losing your mind
    • Who should own FX
    • A composite scenario: the settlement default

  11. Refunds and Disruption

    • Why refunds are structurally hard in travel
    • The mechanics of the reverse flow
    • The disruption playbook
    • A composite scenario: the airline that rehearsed
    • The special cases that break scripts
    • Regulation will keep tightening
    • Measuring the reverse flow

  12. Reconciliation and Leakage

    • The matching problem
    • Where money actually disappears
    • A composite scenario: the downgrade
    • The BSP file, up close
    • Building the case for investment
    • Running reconciliation as a profit centre

  13. Running Payments as a Function

    • Where payments should sit
    • The KPIs that matter
    • How to buy payment services
    • A composite scenario: the function that did not exist
    • What good looks like at each size
    • The questions that reveal everything

  14. Agentic Payments

    • What changes when the buyer is software
    • The credential question
    • Liability: the question that decides adoption
    • What it does to the rest of this book
    • A composite scenario: the first agentic month
    • Preparing without predicting
    • The dated paragraph
    • Closing the book

Plus: Glossary · Tips for Newcomers to Travel Payments · Appendix: The Travel Payments Health Check · About the Author

Questions people ask

Do I need a payments background to read it?

No. Chapter 1 builds the vocabulary from nothing and there is a glossary at the back. It is written for commercial and finance people as much as for payment specialists.

Does it cover hotels and OTAs, or only airlines?

Both. The settlement chapter is airline-specific because BSP is, but the merchant of record question, acquiring, fraud, virtual cards, FX and reconciliation apply to any travel seller, and the examples include agencies and OTAs.

You work for a payment orchestration company. Is this a sales pitch?

No, and I say so in the book where it matters. Chapter 6 includes when you do not need orchestration, and the acquiring chapters are written so you can use them in a tender against any vendor, mine included.

Is the Kindle edition the same content as the paperback?

Yes, the same text and the same health check. The paperback is 149 pages.

What is the health check, and do I have to buy the book to use it?

Forty scored questions on your own payment setup, grouped by chapter, with result bands and a score card. The fillable PDF is free on this site and needs nothing else.

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