Unlock Travel Cashflow With Payments Data

"Gaby (00:00) Welcome to the Future of Full Spatiality podcast. I'm your host Gabi and today we're going to talk about payments in travel. Travel is the only industry where guests often pay months before they experience the product, which makes payments, regulation and cash flows really critical. Today I William from Fellow. He's here to show us how payments and the data can unlock money, but also gain trust of your visitors. Welcome William. Will Bicknell (00:27) Hi Gabby, thanks very much for having me. Gaby (00:30) My first question is directly, often say that you are a data company disguised as a payment platform. What do you mean? Will Bicknell (00:40) So we think about ourselves as a data company because we're much more than just about the payment. So payments companies are quite often, it's just the transaction. You you pay 50 euros and that's them done. Whereas we're much more obsessed with all of the data that's around that and how a travel business can leverage that data to help them optimize how they run their business. So a good example that is Customers made a payment, but the front office, the sales team need to know that that payment has arrived so they can get on with the next stage of the booking, like pay for the flights or the hotel. And there's loads of use cases around using that data in your travel business. Gaby (01:18) think that's so interesting and to get the audience to know you a little bit let's do like a quick fire I will just ask you four questions and if you can just answer them really quickly that will be much much fun so what's the last rap you took Will Bicknell (01:29) Go for it. Last trip I took. So last trip I took was ⁓ fantastic. I went with my wife and my daughter to Europe and we drove in our electric car and followed the women's Euros. And for any English listeners out there, was a very happy result for us. So it fantastic, fantastic experience. And there was some interesting payments experiences in trying to charge an electric car around Europe as well. Gaby (01:43) you And what's one travel app that you cannot live without when you go on a trip? Will Bicknell (02:02) Google Maps. Gaby (02:03) And a quote you live and build by your startup. Will Bicknell (02:07) ⁓ Enjoy yourself. Gaby (02:09) Beautiful, I think that's really really important. And the last one, fellow in three words. Will Bicknell (02:15) ⁓ Travel, payments, people. Gaby (02:18) Travel payments people. A lot of peace I would say. How you started as a tour operator, how did you came up with okay I need to fix this problem because it's quite difficult, there are a lot of regulations. Yeah why why solving this? Will Bicknell (02:37) So yeah, you're right. back in my career, I set up a tour operator, set it up with three of my mates from university. And we grew that business quite nicely, but payments were something which kept us up at night or a bit of a pain for us in terms of how did we work with the merchant acquirers, those are the companies that process the payment transactions. And then how did that interface with the regulations? So we're based in the UK, the package travel regulations or the package travel directive across Europe. And, and, uh, yeah, we had lots of challenges with like optimizing payments for customers and things. So I, I'd always felt the pain of it. Um, I then actually further in my career then ended up as chief innovation officer, um, for a FinTech company. And I was actually designing a new type of credit card for them. Um, and as part of that, I had to learn a lot about how actually the banking systems worked and the payments, you know, the really deep level detail of, of how payment systems worked. And interesting enough, also underwriting, so looking at the risk of your customers and how likely they are to repay you. And I kind of thought, I kind of came to the conclusion, actually, I tell you what, I can take the experience and both these two quite different industries and different places and put them together to solve the pain that I felt in the travel industry. So I think I was incredibly lucky that I got these two different completely different experiences but could put them together to go, well actually that was a pain, I think I know how to solve it now. Gaby (04:08) Yeah, and you told me you were on a trip and you already also felt payment difficulties while charging your car. What kind of problems do the users have based on payments in the travel industry? Because like I said, travel is the only industry where you pay upfront and only get something a few months later. Will Bicknell (04:29) Yeah, so well, I mean, it depends on what sort of level experience you've got. But yes, but that if we think about that paying a long time before you get the service that you're paying for, that opens up lot of challenges in the for the payments industry themselves, because you're going to engage a merchant acquirer. So that's the person who's enabling you to process a credit or a debit card with the Visa and MasterCard schemes in American Express, right. So Gaby (04:59) Yeah. Will Bicknell (04:59) But because you've taken the money from the customer but not given them the product, what happens if you as the travel company ⁓ fail in between times, or maybe one of your suppliers fails? Somebody's got to refund that customer. And that causes a risk and exposure for those merchant acquirers. So they've got to understand what's going on in a travel business, how likely is that to happen? So how do I provide them services and how do I charge for those services? Gaby (05:13) Yes. Will Bicknell (05:29) So that's what makes it payments very difficult and travel because of this extra exposure and risk that you have. It's not like you you pay for a widget and it gets delivered in the post the next day and it's and it's simple to do the refunds. And then you've got and it partly is why I set up a whole business. Then also got so that you've got the merchant acquirers who worried about the risk of the travel company. But you've also got the regulations which are trying to protect the consumer to say, hey, consumer, don't worry. you booked a holiday, if it doesn't go ahead, you're going to get your money back. And then there's a, so then you have another challenge. If you've got to satisfy the regulations, you've got to keep the merchant acquirer kind of comfortable with what you're doing, but those two things don't really talk to each other very well. And so can create some challenges and, and here's where data can, can be really helpful. So you can actually accurately share what's going on in your business to the relevant parties and make it easier for them to understand. So making it easier for you to comply with regulations and work with payments companies. Gaby (06:27) Yeah, so it makes it a lot easier by using fellow to have that communication with those parties. But I think also a really strong interesting thing you always say is like the payment data and also help like unlock money. How is that happening? Will Bicknell (06:43) well, there's, I mean, what is it? You use the payments for, should, a lot of people think about payments as just a call center. It's not, you should be thinking about how does it help you grow your business? So yeah, it's very simple. Examples are like, how much time do you spend contacting your customers to take a payment? Well, yeah, payment links aren't new, but a lot of travel companies we discover still don't use payment links, which you can send it to your customer and they just click it and make the payment in their time. You're not having to phone them up or and then also have increased fraud risk if you're taking a payment over the phone. So you can reduce the amount of time you spend collecting money from your customers. And then you can start to do, you can then use that data to, as I saying earlier, inform your team when is that customer paid. So you can then get on with booking the rest of the trip. You can set up the payments in installments to take them in automatically from your customers. You're not gonna chase them. Or even if you're just doing a deposit and a final balance, you can automate that process. So it's not using your internal team's time. And then your finance teams who are trying to go, well, hang on, we've received all this money from the merchant acquirer. They've, they've given us a massive, great big lump of money. We've now got to figure out which payments are included in there, which refunds are included in there, which charges are included in there, and then reconcile that. And that's a complicated process. If you haven't, you haven't spent a lot of time like us thinking about how to solve it. Gaby (07:54) you Will Bicknell (08:08) and automating it. Gaby (08:09) Yeah, it sounds complex, right? There are so many things going on, but also, like you said, you can really use the data or like the payments are not in a call center. You really can use it to optimize your operations and everything. If I was like a starting tour operator that wants to optimize my operations based on my payments, which two metrics should the operator watch daily to keep? Yeah. to catch flow healthy and optimize their operations. Will Bicknell (08:39) Sorry, I didn't quite catch the question there. Gaby (08:42) Which two metrics should operators watch daily to keep their business healthy? Will Bicknell (08:48) ⁓ The thing about travel is it's incredibly broad, right? So you've got some very small, ⁓ very niche, high value operators, and then you'll have some volume players. So they'll be looking at different things. ⁓ in terms of payments, mean, things you could look at is like, trying to get some good bits of data that they would be a Appeal to them across the board. mean, yeah success rate of payments going through how much manual time your team's spending managing payments or dealing with customer queries around payments You shouldn't really have very many of either very many of those. So I'm keeping an eye on that Any other costs of your transaction? So how many international customers are you having? So do you have a lot of? Customers who are let's say potentially in the United States that are paying you you will be paying higher transaction fees for those keep an eye on those because you can surcharge some of them and recover some of those costs. just having somebody who's looking at all the data that's produced around your payments is going to be helpful. Gaby (09:57) So I would say like a dashboard would be really useful for them to understand what is going on in their operations and also reflect on that, optimize that tweak where maybe time is leaking or costs are leaking and optimize that. What would you say was like one of the most interesting worst type of tour operator having the payments to their guests? what is like shocked you that it's still used? by two operators. Will Bicknell (10:28) Well, taking payments on the phone, right? It amazes me in this day and age, you still take payments on the phone, because what you're saying to your customers, you've got to be around when I want you to be around to take the phone call. And then you've also exposing yourself to people in your business writing card numbers down potentially, which they should never do, you know, but all typing them into a screen, which again, they should never do unless that's a properly secure area. And then you also open, you're not because you're not using the Gaby (10:38) Mm-hmm. Will Bicknell (10:57) 3D secure, sorry if I'm getting a bit technical here, but you're asking your customer to do a secondary authentication, so it really isn't me making that payment. If you're not taking that authentication, you're exposing yourself to the risks of a chargeback or a claim of some fraud of some sort on those payments. So you're being inefficient with your time and you're exposing yourself to risks that you don't really need, but it goes on a lot still in travel, I'm amazed. Gaby (11:23) That is, yeah, would say kind of like shocking that people are still doing that, right? And a lot of people even use spreadsheets, you name it. What would you say like is the biggest like mistaken opinion about payments? Like why are people not innovating on that subject or why are they not optimizing that? Will Bicknell (11:43) well, cause it's, it's, it's, it's where is it on your list of prioritization? Right? So I think people you're running, but you're running a travel business and also a lot of things you're thinking about, like, you know, new product or new marketing initiatives around it. ⁓ and then you think, but yeah, and because I think about payments is just the sort of cost center thing. I'm not really getting it high enough up the priority list. And then it's a techie thing as well. It's like, oh, I've got to get the tech team to give me some time or I need the freelance guy helps out the tech to sort some stuff out. it depends on when you last looked at this. We've got really simple to use API, which make this stuff very quick. We also have a dashboard and things which mean a lot of it you can do without any technical integration. So you can just get up and running quickly. So I think it's, know. Gaby (12:15) Yeah. Will Bicknell (12:29) I would say this, wouldn't I? But I think people should be looking at how they're using payments and thinking, there ways I can improve my business and the operations and the cost of my operations so I can kind grow my business more quickly and easily. Gaby (12:45) Yeah, and you were also talking about compliance and the regulations and everything. What are the newest trends on that and how do see the future of that and how would it help travel or maybe how could fellow help travel by interfering in that? Will Bicknell (13:01) ⁓ Well, I think regulation doesn't move very fast, let's point out, okay, so regulation is generally, you know, it's government departments and they don't change things very often and understandably so because there's a lot of things you've got to kind of coordinate and get right and make sure that it works for most of the people that you're trying to regulate. ⁓ But it all comes back to data, right? ⁓ If you've got the data around when your customers paying, when are they traveling? How did they pay? it credit card, debit card, bank transfer? Having all that information about how and then how you're protecting that consumer, which under the regulations might be in a trust account or you might have a bond or insurance policy. Having all that data accurate and easy to share with your partners is what's going to help you going forward. I think the second part of your question is like, what changes do I see in regulation coming on? When regulators are looking at like, what are the newer forms of payments that are coming up and how do we ensure that we've got the protections? Because let's take for example, open banking in the UK. That doesn't come with the same protections as a credit card payment, right? So credit card payments have inbuilt consumer protection, whereas an open banking payment doesn't. ⁓ That might mean that different people are going to have to protect the funds that the customer's paid and so regulators need to think about how they're going to cope with that. Gaby (14:25) Yeah, so if I'm hearing it correctly, like payments and like the regulations can be like a competitive advantage, right? You gain trust, are better in payments, you use the data. It can be really being competitive advantage for starting to operators or operators that want to innovate. ⁓ Will Bicknell (14:43) Yeah, definitely. Higher quality, trustworthy data that you can share with other people is definitely a competitive advantage. And some of that comes with over time, right? Because if you're a new startup business, you haven't got that data to share, but actually if you're collecting it, you can share it going forward. But if you're an existing business, making sure that data is really, really clear and easy to share is a definitely competitive advantage, means you can lower some of your costs. Gaby (15:06) Yeah, so it's key. would say it's key and important to just do it. We also see this trend in travel about AI. We see it everywhere, to be honest, and AI needs data. What do you see? Like, where can AI help payments or even help with the payment data or what kind of techniques could it use? Will Bicknell (15:26) ⁓ let's say give some examples where I think AI can be incredibly helpful in travel in the back office, right? ⁓ it's the unsexy part of it, isn't it? But, you've got travel companies that will be receiving tons of invoices coming in from all their different suppliers. And they've probably got a team of people who might be looking at those invoices and going, right, what is it for? Who's it from? Which booking does it relate to? Well, actually you can use some of the LLMs now and some, some tools which will ingest all of those. automatically look at them and then pick out the salient bits like what's the name of the supplier? Is there a reference to which booking it is? Or maybe there's a customer name and then match that up. you're now turning a manual process into an automated process, which you'd still need a human in the loop because you would want somebody to, you know, it's not going to get it right all the time. And you need somebody to keep on checking it to make sure it's working so that you can read it, continue to be trained and learn. But If you can do that at scale ⁓ and at speed, you can save yourself an awful lot of time. And then actually you can then off the back of that manage your payout process to those suppliers in a timely fashion that optimizes your cashflow. Gaby (16:36) Yeah, interesting. And I think it's so interesting that you know what people are paying for. So you also know what kind of upselling maybe is interesting for some people. Do you see there like maybe trends or opportunities? Will Bicknell (16:49) Yeah, I think it's a massive amount of sales assistant. I think what you say is like a sales assistant. can see, you Hey, you're you're you've asked us about these kinds of things. Well, actually, I could I could automatically get the AI to automatically suggest some stuff. you've come back and you don't like this. You do like that. And then it can suggest further further ⁓ further kind of ⁓ things to do on your trips. And again, this will also depend on like what type of business you are. If you're really super specialist business where Actually, everything you create is 100 % bespoke every time is going to have less impact if it's like much more generic type trips. yeah, I mean, I'm personally very, very excited by already the powerful, the power that AI can bring to you, but there's going to be a whole lot more it can do. But I think it's one of these things, a bit like a Doppler effect. It's like everything's over. It's going to change everything immediately tomorrow. Well, it might take a bit longer than we all think. And actually we've got to pay. Gaby (17:44) Yeah. Will Bicknell (17:45) We've got to pick the starting point. So where's it going to have some really valuable impact now rather than think it's going to change everything. Gaby (17:52) Yeah, and talking about like starting points, you're building this whole new tech company with super interesting value proposition. How is it to build that in the industry that we're living in and in the payment industry? Because you're kind of travel tech, fintech, data tech, everything together. Will Bicknell (18:15) Yeah, but first we got to the right people in your team. I think that's really important to stress having people understand what we're trying to build and where we're going to go with it. And also people from we've got relevant experience to bring to us. So that's like tech experience, but also travel experience and especially payments experience, because it's all kind of complicated in their own right in terms of understanding it. having really good people who understand the problems that we're trying to solve and having a really clear trajectory of where we're trying to go to. Gaby (18:36) Hmm. Will Bicknell (18:44) And then it's great, it's fun. I thrive on going, why is that so broken over there? Why doesn't it work very efficiently? I'm sure there's a better way of doing that. then trying to make sure we hear enough voices who are saying it's actually broken right from the industry and then go great. that seems an obvious problem to get and solve now. Let's move on to it, which is fun. Gaby (19:00) Yeah. Yeah, I think that's also the way to go, right? To build something that's really needed, where you have a lot of people saying, this is broken, please fix it. What was like a- Will Bicknell (19:15) Yeah. Yeah. But there's lot of baby steps along the way still. Like we talked about payment links, right? Not everyone, there's not a hundred percent adoption of using payment links. There's not a hundred percent adoption of, you know, being, setting up the installment payments to automatically take the second payment off your customer. There's not enough, you know, reconciling, automatically reconciling your information. These are quite simple things, which are people aren't doing today, which, you know, so there's a lot of low hanging fruit to fix and solve already. Gaby (19:41) I think that's interesting because let's say you could help the industry take the first baby step. What would that be then in this space? Will Bicknell (19:51) Well, obviously, use us, ⁓ connecting your data together, right? So let's just take reconciliation, for example. So connecting your payments data with your bank information and then reconciling that automatically. That would be a very simple baby step for people to take that would have a lot of value to them. So there's no manual kind of figuring out where all the money's gone. Gaby (19:54) you Yeah, and did you see like a client or case study that took that first baby step or even maybe like a leap of faith where you really thought like, wow, everything clicked in place, the value proposition and the case study. Will Bicknell (20:30) Yeah, well, I we got a couple of case studies recently of people who've managed to use our API. So good stuff. a very specialist tour operator was running group tours, used to still use his spreadsheets. Okay. So it's not a huge company, everybody, you know, he was getting people going, I'm booking on the tour, but I want to add this bit or that bit. So everybody had a different price for their thing, but was maybe a hundred or so of them. So you then have a spreadsheet and then you have to go and manually go and collecting payments on them from them. Well, We managed to, as soon as it hit the spreadsheet, it would call our APIs and using Zapier because he doesn't have a tech team. So he could really easily use Zapier to connect it up, connect his spreadsheet up to our booking things. would immediately then send a payment link to that customer. customer would get the payment link with exactly the right amount of money automatically linked to the right reference, which then as soon as the customer paid, would then update the spreadsheet to say that customer is now paid. gone from hours of manually creating links or phoning up customers and then getting the payment and then re-entering that package, especially all automated, straight off the customer going, I want to book on that trip, please. Gaby (21:37) Yeah, I'm love seeing how you like the travel industry is quite traditional. There wasn't like a lot of innovation. There is becoming a lot of innovation, but you're really helping people make like those baby steps and helping them to improve their paying experience. My last question to you is in your ideal world, what does the perfect payment experience look like for both the operator as well as for the customer, of course? Will Bicknell (21:53) Yeah. ⁓ Well, invisible would be perfect, wouldn't it? It would just sort of magically happen without any intervention. So ⁓ the perfect payment experience. ⁓ Just making it really slick and simple for all sides, right? So customer gets the alert, what makes the payment using just probably their phone, authenticating on their phone and everything goes through. then... ⁓ And we're not far from being able to do that, right? We've got Google Pay, Apple Pay, and all these kind of things which make payment really slick. And then connecting it is probably more of the back office stuff, making sure that's all connected and flows through on your back office to alert the right people as to what's going on and update the right system. Gaby (22:29) Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And I think also you like, like you said, like not everybody is really technical. So you guys are for example, working with Zapier which makes it also really helpful for maybe like the smaller, smaller operations to help and use your, your things. And I think that's like the first step to the ideal payment experience. Will Bicknell (23:05) Yeah, yeah, we've got I mean, just to elaborate, yeah, we try and make this simple. So it doesn't matter what the size of business you are, but you're getting the capability of a billion, billion euro plus business because that's we're designing all these tools which they might have which you wouldn't normally have access to. And then we've got a team of people who really understand what travel companies need. And we've seen, we've seen like, you know, hundreds of them have got Gaby (23:24) Mm-hmm. Will Bicknell (23:29) zero as their back office system, but there's a hundred different ways they use it. But our guys have seen these and then they can help you through, How do we connect this information up and then use tools like Zapier to build kind of very bespoke, interesting functionality that you very quickly that you can use as a smaller travel company. Gaby (23:48) Yeah, so in the ideal world, the payment experience is invisible and sleek to implement, but also sleek for the customer to use. Yeah. I want to give you a big thanks Will, because it was really interesting to hear this new world opening up and look under the hood of travel payments and learn that there's so much we can learn from and do still. And there are a lot of baby steps that we can take to go to the ideal world of travel payments. Will Bicknell (23:56) Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Gaby (24:17) I want to thank the listeners for listening. Follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram and TikTok. And if you want, our website also shows this full episode. Have a nice day and thank you very much, Will. Will Bicknell (24:29) Thank you very much. Take care... "