Nabilah Safira
TechInAfrica – A global travel reservation provider has secured a partnership with Safaricom by integrating its payments service to the joint system. The consequence of this development is a more simplified payment process for customers of Travelport, the travel company. They will now able to book trips, hotel accommodation, and transportation by using M-Pesa to pay.
The partnership has sped up the service’s efficiency for more than 800 travel agents and their customers, as noted by Michael Joseph. “We are pleased that the travel industry is set to benefit from increased efficiency and ease of doing business, reducing the time and effort it takes to make bookings and reservations.”
The accepted M-Pesa as a cashless payment option also means a higher reach for potential customers. Agents also lose the need to manually reconcile customer reservations with the fully-automated travel reservations.
“Our commerce platform aims to offer the ultimate travel experience for today’s connected digital age. Having M-Pesa as a payment choice enables our travel agents to effectively tailor their products to meet the demands of the modern traveler,” Nita Nagi, the Regional Manager of Travelport, said.
Safaricom wasn’t the first company to integrate its service to the travel platform. Other companies in the likes of Carlson Wagonlit Travel Kenya, FCm Travel Solutions Kenya Incentive Travel, Acharya Travel, and Travel N’ Style have also taken the route. Earlier this year, M-Pesa and Alibaba formed partnership to smoothen the transactions process for Kenya’s online shoppers, in which the deal allows the shoppers to buy goods by the mobile payment service, aligned with the data from the Central Bank of Kenya which revealed most people’s preference on cashless payment method, as shown by the 90% of cashless transaction occurring in April 2019.
Travelport connects the world’s leading travel providers with online and offline travel buyers in a proprietary business-to-business (B2B) travel platform.
Source: Venturesafrica.com
