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San Francisco’s dominant airline informed some travel agenciess that as of July 20 it will no longer let them procese credit and debit card purchases for airline ticketsxusing United’s merchant-processing Instead, such agencies would have to require traveler s to pay with cash, process card payments with the agency’sd own merchant processing service and forward the cash to Unite or book the tickets on United’s web site using the traveler’s credit or debit card issuedf by , (NYSE: V) , MA) (NYSE: AXP) and others.
An agent usinbg United’s web site, bypassing such travel systemse as Apolloand Sabre, would not allow companies to capture the discountsa they have negotiated with United nor would it allo w their travel agent to survey severapl carriers on a route to find the lowest price. “Several Bay Area companiesz have deals with United Airlinesfor discounts,” said Marc president of Casto Travel, which isn’t among the agencie that United has cut off from its merchant-processing Casto says he’s reached out to some of the firm’s corporatee clients to express concern over United’xs new card acceptance but declined to discuss what was said in those conversations.
United Airlines (NASDAQ: did not respond to requests for United is hoping to shift the cost of acceptinb credit and debit cardzs onto selectedtravel agencies. Those agencies say the airline’d move shifts to them the risk for payint out refunds if the carrieregoes bankrupt. While it’s also likely to reduce the amountf of money that Unites has to keep in the bank to guarsdagainst charge-backs, it would increas those requirements for the travel agents. That’e a nonstarter for most agencie — and their banks, which woulf have to honor charge-back requests that coulcd total billions of dollars in the eventr of anairline bankruptcy.
“I don’t thinm there’s any travel including AmericanExpress Travel, that couldr shoulder that liability,” Casto said.
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