Allowing businesses to sell flights more easily with no upfront capital is one of the travel industry’s biggest barriers to entry. To address this challenge, flights API provider Duffel has launched a new solution for travel businesses looking to take customer payments online. This puts them in control of the payments process and enables them to make money from selling flights.
Built exclusively for the travel industry, Duffel Payments was created in partnership with Stripe – one of the leading payment service providers (PSP) – to underpin Duffel’s security and reliability.
New travel businesses can start selling flights with Duffel Payments in a matter of minutes with no upfront capital or down payments. This combats the lengthy applications, approval processes and large bond that are usually necessary when using a PSP. Travel sellers no longer need the regular top-ups and holding of capital in a digital wallet either.
“Companies like Duffel are opening up the travel industry to new players by breaking down many of the barriers that prevent companies from getting started and succeeding,” said Mark Barry, Head of EMEA Startups at Stripe. “We’re excited they are using Stripe’s financial infrastructure to abstract complexity and create new possibilities.”
As well as being able to charge their customers directly, Duffel Payments allows travel sellers to add a mark-up to their fares and bundle other travel products together such as accommodation and travel insurance.
To improve the experience for both travel businesses and their customers, Duffel Payments handles refunds fast and without a fuss. This means merchants do not need to navigate complex rules and fees from airlines. Duffel returns funds to merchants and handles everything else behind the scenes.
“Being able to use Duffel as both our flights and our payments provider is incredibly attractive to Pelikin,” said Sam Brown, CEO of Pelikin. “We’re in the business of making travel and spending simple for our customers. With one integration, we can access powerful APIs through Duffel allowing us to sell flights and extras from major airlines around the world and charge our customers.”
Duffel is building the new operating system for travel, offering a developer-friendly platform that enables any merchant to instantly search flights, make bookings, reserve seats, and sell paid extras like checked bags. Currently, Duffel is connected to over 300 airlines including direct connections with British Airways, Emirates and American Airlines.
Duffel has ensured that its payments solution is developer-friendly, knowing that merchants want to get started with selling flights quickly, and customers want an easy-to-use platform. Developers can embed the booking form into a website or app in just a few minutes.
“Securing a payments provider in the travel industry is notoriously difficult,” said Steve Domin, CEO and co-founder of Duffel. “Other payments solutions require new businesses to have large amounts of money upfront before they even receive payment from customers. These solutions can also make it challenging to bundle up other products, refunds can take a while, and the payment process itself can be temperamental. We’re delighted to partner with Stripe to offer Duffel Payments, which overcomes these pain points.”
