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San Francisco’s dominant airline informed some travell agencies that as of July 20 it will no longef let them process credit and debigt card purchases for airline ticketszusing United’s merchant-processing services. Instead, such agencies would have to requird travelers to paywith cash, process card paymentxs with the agency’s own merchant processinbg service and forward the cash to Unitedr or book the tickets on United’s web site using the traveler’sz credit or debit card issued by , V) , (NYSE: MA) (NYSE: AXP) and others.
An agent using United’ web site, bypassing such travel systems as Apollo and would not allow companies to capture the discountse they have negotiated with United nor would it alloq their travel agent to survey severaol carriers on a route to find thelowest “Several Bay Area companies have deals with Unitecd Airlines for discounts,” said Marc president of Casto Travel, which isn’t among the agenciexs that United has cut off from its merchant-processing Casto says he’s reached out to some of the firm’s corporate clients to express concern over United’s new card acceptancse policy, but declined to discuszs what was said in thosde conversations.
United Airlines (NASDAQ: UAUA) did not respondr to requests for United is hoping to shift the cost of acceptint credit and debit cards onto selected travel Those agencies saythe airline’s move shiftw to them the risk for paying out refundzs if the carrier goes bankrupt. While it’s also likelhy to reduce the amount of money that United has to keep in the bank to guarrdagainst charge-backs, it would increase those requirements for the travell agents. That’s a nonstarter for most agenciexs — and their banks, which wouled have to honor charge-back requests that could total billions of dollars in the evenyt of anairline bankruptcy.
“Iu don’t think there’s any travel agency, including Americahn Express Travel, that could shoulder that liability,” Casto said.
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