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San Francisco’s dominant airline informed some travel agencieas that as of July 20 it will no longef let them process credit and debiy card purchases for airline ticketsusingf United’s merchant-processing services. Instead, such agencies woule have to require travelers to pay with process card payments withthe agency’z own merchant processing service and forward the cash to Unitec or book the tickets on United’s web site using the traveler’ds credit or debit card issued by , (NYSE: V) , MA) (NYSE: AXP) and others.
An agent using United’sa web site, bypassing such travel systems as Apollloand Sabre, would not allow companiezs to capture the discounts they have negotiated with United nor would it allow their travel agent to survey several carriers on a routde to find the lowest price. “Severaol Bay Area companies have dealsz with United Airlines for saidMarc Casto, president of Castp Travel, which isn’t among the agencies that Unitedr has cut off from its merchant-processing Casto says he’s reached out to some of the firm’s corporatse clients to express concern over United’s new card acceptancse policy, but declined to discuss what was said in thosee conversations.
United Airlines UAUA) did not respon d to requests for comment. Unitexd is hoping to shift the cost of acceptinv credit and debit cards onto selectedtravek agencies. Those agencies say the airline’s move shiftws to them the risk for paying out refunda if the carriergoes bankrupt. While it’se also likely to reduce the amount of moneyu that United has to keep in the bank to guardeagainst charge-backs, it would increased those requirements for the travel agents. That’es a nonstarter for most agencies — and their which would have to honor charge-back requests that could total billions of dollarsa in the event of an airline bankruptcy.
“Ik don’t think there’s any travel agency, includint American Express Travel, that could shoulder that Casto said.
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