From host agencies and tour operators to boutique hotels and large vacation rental brands.
US travel runs on phone calls — anything more complicated than a domestic point-to-point flight tends to come back to a conversation. Tour operators, river cruise lines, host agencies, destination weddings, group travel, and luxury vacation specialists all take large deposits and balance payments over the phone. Hotels and vacation rental managers pre-authorize incidentals on every check-in. The phone is where the trust gets built and where the high-value bookings actually close.
The problem is that every one of those phone payments is an opportunity for a card number to land in your call recording, your reservation system, or your property management platform — none of which were designed to hold card data. And travel runs on tight margins; a card data breach plus a multi-state breach notification on top of a weather disruption or a cancellation wave is the kind of compounding bad week most travel businesses don't survive cleanly.
On top of that, ARC and IATA accreditations have their own expectations, your acquirer is watching chargeback ratios, and your reservation team is juggling Sabre or Amadeus alongside whatever booking engine you're using. The last thing anyone wants is a PCI assessment that pulls all of those into scope.
Paytia sits between your phone system and your payment gateway. The customer keys their card on their own keypad while your reservations agent or front desk team stays on the line, talking through the itinerary, the room type, the cruise cabin, or the rate. Our DTMF masking replaces the keypad tones with a flat signal in real time — the agent hears nothing identifiable, the call recording stays clean, and the card data goes straight to your existing gateway (Stripe, Chase Payment Solutions, Authorize.Net, Adyen, Braintree, Worldpay US, and others).
Your ARC or IATA settlement, your merchant account, and your money flow stay exactly as they are today. Paytia is the secure capture layer in front of all of that — not a replacement. Reservation systems like Sabre, Amadeus, Travelport, and custom B2B booking engines run alongside; the booking reference travels with the payment so reconciliation just works.
For pre-authorizations on hotel deposits and incidental holds, the auth, capture, and release run against your gateway exactly as today — just without the card number ever touching your PMS or your front desk's screen. For balances on package tours and cruises, the original deposit creates a token your team can charge against weeks or months later without re-prompting for card details.
Deposits at booking, balances 45–60 days before departure — all charged against the same tokenized card without re-prompting.
ARC / IATA-accredited agencies take final payments, deposits, and amendment fees by phone without disturbing settlement workflows.
Pre-authorizations for incidentals at check-in, balance payments at check-out, and group block deposits — all without card data in your PMS.
Group leaders pay deposits across multiple travelers in one call. Tokenized cards make the balance run automatic 60 days out.
SAQ A
Down from SAQ D
Token
Deposit-to-balance flow
Pre-auth
Hotel and rental holds
Days
Live with most agencies
Yes — that's one of the most common travel use cases in the US. The deposit creates a tokenized reference your reservation system stores against the booking. When the balance is due — typically 45 to 60 days before departure on package tours — you can charge the same card without the customer reading their card number out again. The token is meaningless to anyone who intercepts it; only your gateway can charge against it. Same flow works for OTAs taking final payments and for cruise lines collecting pre-departure balances.
Paytia is the secure capture layer in front of your existing gateway and merchant account, so whatever ARC, IATA, or BSP settlement arrangement you have with your accreditation today stays exactly as it is. Card data doesn't transit through reservation systems or call recordings, but the money flow your accreditation depends on is unchanged. We've worked with ARC-accredited host agencies and IATA-accredited tour operators without disrupting their settlement workflows.
Paytia sits alongside your reservation system rather than inside it. Agents have a browser tab for Sabre, Amadeus, Travelport, or your custom reservation platform, and a separate Paytia tab; the booking reference travels with the payment so reconciliation is straightforward. Most agencies are live in days, not weeks, because there's no GDS integration project to wait for. The same pattern works with TripActions, Concur, custom B2B booking engines, and direct-booking sites.
Refunds run against the original tokenized payment — full or partial — without re-asking for card details. That matters during disruption: when weather grounds flights or a wildfire closes a destination, your team needs to refund quickly without spending half an hour on the phone with each customer. Agents click refund in the Paytia portal, the gateway processes it, and the customer sees the credit on their statement.
Yes. Hotels, vacation rental managers, and car rental operators routinely pre-authorize cards for deposits and incidental holds. Paytia handles the auth, capture, and release exactly the way your gateway expects, with no card data entering your property management system or your call recording. Front desk and reservations teams can take the booking and the auth on the same call without the guest reading their card number out loud.
See Paytia on a deposit-and-balance flow that looks like yours. Most travel businesses are live in days.
Trusted by US law firms, insurers, healthcare organizations and regulated businesses that can't afford to get compliance wrong. Learn more about Paytia