On December 31, 2020, enforcement of the European regulatory standard for Strong Customer Authentication (SCA), will begin. This introduces the requirement for two-factor authentication for many online payments in Europe. As a result, payments that are not appropriately authenticated will be rejected by your customers’ banks. This means that the immediate (i.e. simultaneous) consent of the cardholder is required for a successful charge to a credit card.
Even though this is only a regulation for the European Economic Area (EEA), it will also affect hosts outside if, for example, a guest with a credit card from the EEA wants to be charged a no-show fee. Even though the banks promise that exceptions should also be possible, it will become increasingly difficult in the future to charge a card without the immediate consent of the holder. The sooner the affected businesses with guests from the EEA initiate new strategies to secure the booking, the smaller the resulting loss will be.
We at Book.World, have a solution for your direct bookings via our integrated BookWorld booking engine in your website. We recommend offering non-refundable rates. In a second step, our system will prompt the guest shortly before arrival to pay for the stay (or at least the first night) directly over the Internet, thereby already collecting any no-show charges.
The OTA’s such as HostelWorld, Expedia, Booking.com etc have their own solutions for this new rule and we are compatible with them to import the amount paid or for you to collect.
Please contact us to get more details about the features.