Virtual Cards from Booking.com, Expedia and Agoda
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Some booking channels provide virtual cards, often for bookings where the guest has already made a payment to the channel. It can only be charged for a limited time and for a limited amount.
We recommend activating the “Sirvoy Vault” feature in Sirvoy, which makes it possible to automatically save the virtual cards provided for the bookings. Cards should be charged at the time of check-out (except for Booking.com which allows virtual cards to be charged at check-in, or earlier for non refundable bookings).
We suggest the payment solution “Stripe” for charging the virtual cards. The nature of virtual cards means they can’t be automatically saved to Stripe, but our integration with that solution allows you to retrieve the virtual card details directly from the Sirvoy feature that saves them.
Please read more about what Stripe settings need to be done for charging virtual cards here.
If the virtual card amount doesn’t match the actual booking value, reach out to the channel for more information regarding this as some deduct commission, taxes and discounts.
Booking.com
Booking.com only uses virtual cards in certain countries. Check with Booking.com’s support or your account manager to see if it’s available in your country. In your Booking.com login, you can choose if you want to accept “alternative payment methods”. If choosing yes, guests will also be able to book without leaving their card details. In each case where a guest payment is made directly to Booking.com, you will receive a virtual card from Booking.com.
Note: When you charge a virtual card, Stripe might send a notification to the guest. Since Booking.com might apply discounts, the amount in this notification could be higher than what the guest actually paid and might therefore cause confusion. You can turn off such notifications in Stripe, but please note that these are also turned off for payments with regular credit cards.
Expedia
You can decide if you would like to give the guest the possibility to pay at the hotel (Hotel Collect) or directly when creating the booking (Expedia Collect). This is called Expedia Traveler Preference (ETP). If a guest chooses to pay directly at the Expedia website (Expedia Collect) you will receive a virtual card from Expedia. Note that the virtual card excludes the commission amount and that the booking total in Sirvoy will match the value of the virtual card.
Agoda
Agoda provides different payment options and depending on your choice, virtual cards will be provided for bookings sent to Sirvoy. Any Agoda virtual card starting with the prefix 553397 will not be possible to charge with Stripe, but have to be charged with a different solution.