Cross-border payments for tour operators are financial transactions used to collect money from international travelers and pay overseas suppliers, such as hotels, transport and guides. Because these payments involve different currencies, they require interconnected banking networks to convert funds and settle accounts.
Travelers are increasingly choosing international destinations. International tourist arrivals exceeded 1.4 billion in 2024, and the World Economic Forum predicts that the travel sector will contribute $16 trillion to GDP by 2034. It's clear that the appetite for cross-border travel is growing.
This is a huge opportunity—provided your payment strategy is ready for it. When you make cross-border payments easier, you improve the customer experience, and that's very good for business.
So, what stands in the way of the ideal cross-border payment experience? In this article, we break down the most common cross-border payment challenges and explore a solution that simplifies international transactions for tour operators.
Cross-Border Payment Challenges
Scaling your business globally doesn't come without its headaches. For many tour operators, processing cross-border payments is often messy and unpredictable. But before we dive into the solutions, let's explore the main hurdles tour operators face with seamless international payments:
Hidden Costs
Hidden costs in cross-border payments are a common pain point—68% of business owners worldwide report paying unnecessarily high transaction fees on international payments. What looks like a single cross-border transaction on the surface often carries hidden costs that eat into your hard-earned revenue, such as payment processor fees. These fees typically range from 1.3% to 3.5% of the transaction value and chip away at your bottom line.
Then there's foreign exchange (FX), another major pain point for tour operators. FX fees typically range from 1% to 3% of the transaction value. Because operators face unpredictability in exchange rates, they can't predict or control costs in the way they'd like. Across hundreds of bookings, these hidden cross-border payment costs become a significant financial drain.
Long Settlement Times
In traditional banking networks, cross-border payments can take between 3 and 5 days to settle. These long settlement times are a major cash-flow disruptor for tour operators that need to pay local vendors to confirm bookings and finalize itineraries. Delayed payments strain supplier relationships that rely on timely payments to guarantee services, and this weakens operators' negotiating power for future rates.
Complex Regulatory Environments
A complex web of local and international regulations makes managing cross-border payments a big challenge for tour operators. For example, many European companies are legally required to conduct Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) checks to help prevent financial crime and fraud. Then there's another layer of complexity for tour operators to consider—the Payment Services Directive (PSD2) and Strong Customer Authentication (SCA), introduced to enhance online payment security.
For tour operators, adhering to these regulations can create checkout friction, as steps like SCA can result in payment failures that cause customers to abandon the booking altogether. Plus, when you're dealing with different regulations for every country you operate in, there's always the risk that compliance failures lead to fines. For tour operators trying to expand into new markets, all of this regulatory complexity can be a major growth barrier.
Limited Visibility
Cross-border payments can be something of a black box. With limited visibility into transaction status and a lack of a clear breakdown of fees and the exchange rates paid, tour operators are left in the dark. This has a knock-on effect, creating accounting challenges and cash flow issues for businesses with already thin margins.
Cross-Border Payment Solutions
Thankfully, the hurdles we've explored above aren't impenetrable. By partnering with the right travel payment provider, you can step into a whole new world of seamless cross-border payments. That's where Repayd comes in.
You serve customers from every corner of the globe, and that requires the right cross-border setup. Repayd removes the barriers you face, offering multi-currency acceptance, local acquiring and intelligent routing, meaning your customers enjoy a payment experience that feels local.
Our solutions help tour operators:
Reduce Cross-Border Fees
For small tour operators running on thin margins, every single percentage point counts. Local acquiring means your payments are processed through local banking networks, reducing the high interchange and processing fees of cross-border transactions. Instead of losing a chunk of your booking value to hidden fees, local acquiring lets you keep more of your money.
Increase International Sales
Travelers want to know exactly how much a booking will cost them. Seeing a price in a currency they don't recognize creates a moment of doubt, and allowing them to pay in their local currency removes that doubt. It gives them a sense of familiarity and the confidence they need to complete the checkout process.
Improve Checkout Conversion
Travelers have payment preferences, and you need to be ready to meet them where they are. Offering local payment options that your customers trust, whether credit cards, digital wallets or local bank transfers, improves the likelihood they'll proceed with the booking.
Support Market Entry
Expanding your company's reach to a new market can be a logistical nightmare—until now. Repayd lets you easily enter new regions with a payment infrastructure optimized for those regions.
Combining technology, global acquiring and travel industry expertise, Repayd gives your customers a payment experience they can trust.
Repayd in Action: How Uncover the World Travel Expanded into New Markets
But we don't expect you to take our word for it. Let's take a look at how our approach helped one tour operator overcome cross-border payment hurdles.
With Repayd's help, Uncover the World Travel expanded into new markets with ease. The company, which operates in the tour operator and travel agency industry, needed a payment platform to support its expansion into North America and beyond.
Thanks to Repayd's ability to onboard businesses from anywhere in the world, Uncover the World was able to expand into new markets easily. Through Repayd's multi-currency pricing tool, the company was able to accept payments in multiple currencies. But that's not all—through Repayd's payment processing, all of Uncover the World's customers are automatically financially protected.
Working with Repayd opened up processing channels for the company in GBP, USD, INR, EUR, NZD, CAD and ZAR—without having to open their own bank accounts in these currencies. Now, the sky's the limit for Uncover the World. With Repayd by their side, customers from across the globe can book their travel experiences with confidence.
Why Choose Repayd for Cross-Border Payments
Repayd's cross-border payment solution for tour operators is designed to simplify complex payment flows, reduce fees, and improve settlement speed—all while meeting the unique demands of the travel industry. To make things even easier, the platform also seamlessly integrates with your booking system, ensuring everything you need is in one place.
Ready to simplify cross-border payments and increase your international sales? Contact us today to get started.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are Cross-Border Travel Payments?
Cross-border travel payments are transactions that move money between individuals or businesses in different countries, involving currency exchange and using payment methods such as cards, digital wallets and bank transfers.
What are the Benefits of Cross-Border Travel Payment Solutions?
Cross-border travel payment solutions reduce cross-border fees, increase international sales, improve checkout conversion and support new market entry.
Why are Cross-Border Payments Challenging for Tour Operators?
Cross-border travel payments involve hidden costs that eat into margins, long settlement times that disrupt cash flow, complex regulatory environments and limited visibility into the payment ecosystem.
How Can I Make Cross-Border Payments Seamless?
Repayd makes cross-border payments seamless by reducing cross-border fees with local acquiring, increasing sales by showing prices in customers' local currencies, improving checkout conversion by offering local payment methods and supporting market entry with payment infrastructure optimized for the regions you're expanding into.
Which Local Payment Methods Should I Offer?
It depends on where your travelers are coming from. While credit and debit cards are popular across the globe, they aren't everyone's first choice. For example, if you're targeting travelers from China, Alipay or WeChat Pay is preferred, whereas German travelers might prefer BNPL or digital wallets.
Should I Choose a Cross-Border Payment Provider that Helps with Chargebacks and Fraud?
Yes—travel is a target for payment fraud. Specialized travel payment providers operate sophisticated risk management systems designed to spot patterns that are unique to travel booking fraud. These systems filter out bad actors and protect your revenue.
