The online travel market in India is growing rapidly and is projected to generate 60% of the tourism industry’s total revenue. October to March is the peak season for Indian travellers, and if you run an online tourism business, you’ll feel the pressure.
Here’s the thing about peak travel seasons—they can be a deal-maker or breaker for your brand. If you can design an end-to-end digital journey for customers, including an optimised payment process, your revenue will touch the sky during the peak season.
Alternatively, suppose your digital journey is compromised, and customers face payment failures frequently. In that case, they will likely choose another site because transactions are time-sensitive in the travel sector, and users seek a fast checkout process to get their tickets booked.
This is precisely why opting for a payment router is the best option. A payment router integrates with multiple payment service providers. It detects potential technical issues with one payment method upfront and routes customer transactions to another to reduce drop-offs.
A payment router in the online travel sector helps you complete the end-to-end digital journey you have built for your customers.
This article will discuss multi-PSP routers and how they help online travel merchants optimise customer journeys.
Content Index
- What is a payment router or multi-PSP router?
- Why do travel merchants need a multi-PSP router?
- Best practices to use a payment router in the online travel segment
- Challenges of multi-PSP routers in the travel segment
- Why is Nimbbl the best payment router for travel merchants in India
What is a payment router or multi-PSP router?
A payment router or multi-PSP payment router is middleware that, with a single integration, provides an online merchant with access to multiple payment gateways or payment processors, helping them define the most suitable path for a payment transaction to be completed through their online travel website or application.
A multi-PSP payment router for the travel segment allows businesses to add backups in the processing layer easily, better manage peak hour routing to optimise success rates, and create payment method offers at the system level without creating dependencies on individual PSPs.
Here’s how a payment router works:
In the above example, suppose credit cards for a specific bank are experiencing technical issues with a particular payment gateway, a payment router detects this issue and auto-routes the customer transaction to another alternative gateway to ensure transaction success.
A payment router configures an offer on multiple aggregators.
Suppose you are providing a discount of 5% cash back on credit card transactions. With the payment router in the picture, this offer can be configured on the router’s dashboard and applied to any aggregator without manually configuring multiple aggregators.
Therefore, if an aggregator has a technical issue, the customer can still avail the offer through other aggregators. Since the travel segment is highly competitive and offering attractive discounts plays a crucial role in customer retention, this one feature of intelligent routers is a game changer.
Why do travel merchants need a multi-PSP router?
Online tourism is a highly consumer-efficacy segment where each part of the digital journey matters. Every travel merchant offers similar services for similar price points, there are hardly any differentiators. This is partly why customer experience takes center stage.
Suppose a user urgently tries to book a flight ticket at a particular price. You won’t leverage this urgency if your payment process is not optimised. If the payment fails once, the user will choose one of your competitors because they are in a hurry to complete the transaction fast, and they will pick the brand that streamlines the process.
Ad spending in India is set to grow by 15.7% in 2024, higher than any other country worldwide. No wonder online tourism businesses also play a key part in overall ad spending. When investing significantly in new customer acquisition, why not streamline the last mile to ensure faster checkout without any payment failures?
A multi-PSP router optimises your payment process by routing the users to the appropriate payment service providers. A dynamic payment router leverages payment methods based on transaction volumes. This means handling peak activity periods efficiently by balancing payment loads.
Best practices to use a payment router in the online travel segment
Here are some of the best practices for using a payment router effectively in the online tourism sector:
Use an intelligent payment router
An intelligent payment router helps you choose the best payment service provider based on the local customers’ needs. When a user visits your tourism website’s front end, an intelligent payment router automatically connects your website with the best-performing PSPs. This leads to faster checkout with fewer possibilities of payment failure.
Implement appropriate security measures
During a transaction, a customer shares sensitive information like credit and debit card details, phone numbers, etc. Establish clear policies to protect these datasets from external risks. Deploying encryption and robust firewall configurations will protect the payment transactions from potential vulnerabilities. Additionally, staying compliant with the Indian tourism industry standards is also non-negotiable.
Focus on improving user experience
A payment router is supposed to improve user experience. The router you select should provide a detailed dashboard to switch priorities between multiple payment service providers, offer higher transaction limits, and support modern payment methods like Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) for enhanced user experience.
Challenges of multi-PSP routers in the travel segment
Hear us if you are performing a build vs. buy analysis for your online tourism business. While building an in-house payment router is possible, maintaining it without compromising its security implications takes more effort.
Integrating multiple payment service providers, refining the payment routing algorithm regularly, and managing the entire payment process during peak traffic periods with a high volume of transactions is challenging.
Additionally, blocking unauthorised access during transactions is challenging without adequate security measures. We recommend partnering with an experienced payment routing company for all these reasons.
Why is Nimbbl the best payment router for travel merchants in India
The best payment router in India for online travel companies is – Nimbbl.
Here’s why:
A single intuitive dashboard
Connect with one integration with top payment aggregators like PayU, Razorpay, Worldline, CCavenue, BillDesk, etc. Manage all PSPs within a single dashboard with options to switch, add, remove, and prioritise payment methods. Enabling case-based payment rules can save excess payment processing costs.
Enterprise-grade payments for all businesses
Build payment capabilities for your tourism business, similar to leaders in the OTA space. Experience checkout experience, backup aggregators, routing, and higher transaction limits to handle peak periods better. Manage all of these without any technology and operations dependency.
Next-generation payment flows
Integrate with new-age payment flows like BNPL and UPI with a single API. By integrating with these next-generation payment flows you can reduce go-live timing and perform A/B tests faster.
Want to experience Nimbbl’s multi-PSP payment router?
