Why Reconciliation Remains a Major Challenge
For Online Travel Agencies (OTAs), success depends on volume, speed, and accuracy. You’re often processing thousands of transactions daily, each tied to a flight, hotel, car hire, or ancillary service. But when it comes time to reconcile those payments, things can quickly unravel.
Reconciliation may not be the most visible part of a travel business, but it’s one of the most important. It’s where finance teams confirm that every outgoing payment matches up with the right booking and internal record. And for many OTAs, this step is where speed turns into slowdowns, and complexity turns into risk.
What is Reconciliation in the Travel Industry?
Reconciliation is the process of matching internal records with external payment data to ensure accuracy and identify any discrepancies. In the travel sector, this means linking each transaction to a specific booking, passenger, supplier or itinerary. It is a critical process for financial control, regulatory compliance and operational clarity.
An Industry defying issue
Manual reconciliation remains a major bottleneck for finance teams. Industry research shows that up to 40% of finance staff time can be spent on manual reconciliation tasks, with some reporting error rates typically between 0.8% and 1.8% of transactions. These errors often cause costly investigations and delays in closing the books.
For OTAs, the problem is even greater. Without accurate reconciliation, it becomes nearly impossible to verify what each payment was for, whether it was successful, and if it aligns with your booking and accounting systems.
The Hidden Cost of Poor Reconciliation
Unlike many other industries, travel payments are rarely straightforward. Each customer booking can involve multiple suppliers, currencies and payment methods, often with changing itineraries or amounts. This introduces several common challenges:
- A lack of consistent supplier data across transactions
- Difficulty linking payments to specific bookings
- Manual matching of payments to passenger or itinerary information
- Errors due to currency conversions or name mismatches
- Delays in the month-end close and financial reporting
These challenges create significant pressure on finance teams who often rely on spreadsheets, manual checks and disconnected systems. The result is slower reporting, higher risk of error and reduced visibility into business performance.
Why Traditional Tools Fall Short
Most generic payment platforms are not designed with the travel industry in mind. They do not capture or process the detailed booking data OTAs rely on. Without this information, such as PNRs, flight numbers, hotel references or customer names, finance teams are left guessing what each transaction relates to.
This lack of context makes reconciliation time-consuming and error-prone, especially when managing high transaction volumes or working across multiple currencies and supplier types.
How Pax2pay Helps OTAs Simplify Reconciliation
At Pax2pay, we have developed a reconciliation process specifically designed for travel. Our platform brings together payment data, booking metadata and flexible reporting tools to streamline reconciliation and give you complete financial clarity.
Booking-Level Detail
Each virtual card transaction is automatically linked with relevant booking data at the point of card creation. This includes traveller names, flight or hotel details, internal references and any additional metadata you choose to capture. This level of detail removes guesswork and speeds up matching.
Customisable Metadata Fields
Every travel business is different. Pax2pay allows you to choose from a wide range of custom metadata fields so you can track the details that matter most to your operation, be it flight, cruise, or hotel booking data.
Easy Report Access and Formats
Reconciliation reports are available to download at any time through the Pax2pay platform. Choose between PDF for quick reviews or CSV for importing directly into your accounting systems. CSV exports are especially useful for analysis, integration or audit preparation.
Seamless Integration
For teams looking to automate their reconciliation process, our API allows you to schedule report downloads and sync data directly with your ERP or finance platforms. This means fewer manual steps and a faster close each month.
The Result: Faster, Clearer, More Accurate Reconciliation
Pax2pay’s reconciliation tools are built to deliver measurable improvements for OTAs:
- Accurate matching of payments with booking data
- Improved financial visibility through consolidated reporting
- Faster month-end close with less manual effort
- Support for integration with existing systems
- Flexible setup tailored to your business needs
Ready to Take the Pain Out of Payments?
Our advanced reconciliation process gives OTAs the tools they need to reduce errors, save time and gain full transparency over virtual card spending.
To see how Pax2pay can improve reconciliation in your business, get in touch with our team.