Accommodation Workflow

How to follow best practice when using virtual cards to pay for accommodation

We power centralised settlement for hotel programmes globally using virtual cards. We are the go-to partner for over 120 hotel booking platforms to connect to a network of over 60 virtual card issuers.

Pay for a booking

As a commitment to our partners, we ensure that all connecting platforms integrate consistently, ensuring virtual cards can are utilised securely and Conferma can flow accurate data to external reporting tools.

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1 virtual card per room

You must create one virtual card per room. You must not create a virtual card to pay for multiple room bookings. If you are booking a twin room (two guests), you can use a single virtual card and submit both guest names on the same virtual card.

This ensures:

• Accurate data - specific supplier and purchase data.
• Secure payment - reduces the exposure of the card number.
• You avoid a supplier over-charging the same virtual card, and blocking other payments.

You should enable support for virtual cards wherever a hotel accepts cards, such as American Express, Mastercard or Visa, as a form of payment.

Pre-booking

When requesting a virtual card to pay for hotel rooms, you should use the Hotel deployment type.

The Hotel deployment type will require you to provide the following key elements, in addition to the standard data fields required to generate a virtual card:

Prior to requesting a virtual card, you should prepare your request and consider the items below to populate in your card request:

• Hotel details - set the hotel name, full address including postal or zip code, contact number and if available, fax number. This helps our supplier matching process to optimise delivery via Conferma Connect.
• Hotel rate details - provide the stay dates, room type, rate description and cancellation policy.
• Payment restrictions - it's important to specify the allowances the guest may have to charge to the card. Some corporates only allow room and taxes, whilst others may allow room, dinner, bed & breakfast.
• Traveller email—ensure the traveller's email address is present so they can access the booking via the Conferma App. The app user can resend the Third Party Credit Card Authorisation document to the hotel if there are issues at check-in/out.

Providing this enriched data at deployment helps customers and partners confidently review their payment data.

When setting the activation dates for a virtual card, consider the type of rate being booked:

• Guarantee Rates - If the booking is guarantee rate, set the virtual card activation start date to the day before check-in (unless that is current date, in which case use the current date), and the end date to the check-out date + 7 days. This will block the hotelier from charging the card immediately, only during the stay and allow any ancillary charges, such as meal allowances, after check-out.
• Deposit Rates - If the booking is an advanced deposit or prepaid rate, set the virtual card activation start date to current date, and the end date to the check-out date + 7 days. This will allow the hotelier to charge the card immediately and capture any ancillary charges, such as meal allowances, after check-out.

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Deactivating the virtual card

You can be stricter regarding deactivating the card closer to the date of check-out. However, if the hotel fails to successfully charge the virtual card, they may contact the Travel Management Company and an additional virtual card may need to be created to settle any outstanding payments.

After requesting the virtual card, the full virtual card details will be returned, which can be used in the standard credit card payment fields when submitting to the hotel content provider. You'll have access to the card holder, card number, expiry, CVV details, and the billing address if required. Note that the card holder name will be the account holder name, which is a business name.

Post-booking

If the booking was successful, update the deployment with the hotel confirmation reference in the Supplier Reference field, and if available, provide the PNR Locator to Conferma.

The Supplier Reference will be used when communicating with the hotel.

If the booking was unsuccessful due to a lack of availability, the virtual card status should be updated toFailedWithSupplier. This indicates that the card was submitted to the supplier but is not expected to be charged.

There should be no need to expose the virtual card details to the user or guests in your platform, helping keep the virtual card details secure.

Modifying bookings

When modifying a virtual card for a hotel booking, you should first update the virtual card with all the new booking data, raising the virtual card's credit limit, activation date range and associated booking data. You can then use the virtual card details to attempt to modify the booking.

If the modification fails, you will need to roll back the virtual card data to the previous controls and data.

If the modification is successful, you will need to update the supplier reference and resend the third-party credit card authorisation to the hotel.

Resending a third-party credit card authorisation

Typically, when a hotel reservation is made online, the card used for payment is used as a guarantee, and a new card will be prompted from the guest during check-in. As the guest doesn't have the virtual card in their pocket, we need to send a message to the hotel to give them authority to charge the virtual card we used when reserving the hotel room.

You can use the Conferma APIs to send a third-party credit card authorisation form to the hotel. This message will be sent to the hotel by Conferma Connect.

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What is Conferma Connect?

Conferma Connect is our smart hotel messaging platform that directs messages to the hotel via the hotelier's preferred communication channel. For instance, if a hotel prefers to receive messages that include the full card details via secure email, Conferma Connect will ensure the message is sent via secure email.

Hotels can sign-up for Conferma Connect for free by visiting https://www.confermaconnect.com/.

Once signed up, Conferma will auto-match to the Conferma Connect hotel using the details provided in the Supplier object when a virtual card is requested.

It is very important to provide accurate and rich data in the Supplier object to improve match rates.

Cancelling a booking

If a hotel room is cancelled, you must update the virtual card and change the status to CancelledWithSupplier. Where possible, Conferma will automatically cancel the card with the Card Issuer. This may be an option you need to opt into, so please contact Conferma for more information.

You should also provide the Cancellation Reference during your data update, as this helps account holders to challenge any unexpected charges on the card.