Industry Business of Travel
Billions are lost in travel payments - reclaim the margin
Airline collapses push intermediaries to absorb refund losses, while card fees and thin margins squeeze aggregator profitability. Weavr helps travel platforms protect income, reduce risk and unlock new revenue.
$50bn
lost to airline failures over the past decade — wiping out intermediaries and acquirers.
66%
of travel companies say that inefficiencies in payments are significantly eroding their profits.
Strengthen every part of the travel payment chain:
  • Acquirers: integrate Weavr’s embedded issuing with your acquiring to mitigate airline-failure risk and unlock new interchange revenue.
  • Merchants-of-record: benefit from scheme protection when airlines fail, reducing refund losses and protecting liquidity.
  • Travel marketplaces & aggregators: use low-cost bank-transfer rails for collections and payouts, cutting costs and protecting margins.
"Rather than building all the inherent technology layers into a Mastercard or Visa network, we wanted to go to market as quickly as possible. Embedded finance was the way for us to do that".

Turn payment
pain into profit

Discover how Weavr helps you reduce risk, repair margins and capture new revenue across a range of travel use cases.
  • Protection from airline failure
  • Repair aggregator margins
Protection from airline failure
  • Protection from airline failure
  • Repair aggregator margins

Protect intermediaries from airline collapses with integrated issuing

When airlines collapse, intermediaries are left refunding travellers even after funds have been passed on. Acquirers enforce refund liability regardless of liquidity, leaving travel agents exposed to chargebacks, settlement risk and costly capital buffers.

By integrating Weavr’s issuing capabilities into their acquiring stack, acquirers can offer both acquiring and issuing to their travel intermediary clients – enabling them to ring-fence risk, control fund release and turn exposure into a higher-margin revenue stream.

How embedded card issuing mitigates settlement exposure

  • Ring-fence risk by issuing virtual cards that shift settlement liability to the airline’s acquirer under card-scheme protection, reducing exposure when suppliers fail.

  • Gain visibility and control over booking-level transactions, supporting faster recovery and more effective chargeback management.

  • Improve profitability — issuing generates higher-margin revenue streams than acquiring and enhances enterprise valuation.

What customers want

Travel merchants want protection from airline failures. Traditional bank-transfer models like IATA Pay offer no scheme protection or claw-back capability, leaving them fully exposed when suppliers collapse.

Acquirers with travel exposure face the same challenge. To manage portfolio risk, they often limit or avoid travel clients altogether – sacrificing revenue to stay safe.

Both groups want to embrace the travel sector confidently, with payment infrastructure that ring-fences risk and creates upside.

Capabilities you’ll need
  • Integrated issuing and acquiring under one embedded finance infrastructure.
  • Virtual card issuing to manage supplier settlement and track disbursements in real time.
  • E-money accounts to hold customer balances securely and support transparent reconciliation.
  • Optionally, Weavr’s build-operate-transfer model, managing regulation and operations so you can launch fast – and later expand with your own financial institutions.

Embedded issuing and acquiring

Give travel teams the confidence to operate through airline failures without financial fallout.
Head of Finance
Keeps cash flow stable and avoids sudden refund liabilities when airlines collapse - with settlement risk ring-fenced under scheme protection.
Payments Operations Manager
Gains full visibility over issued virtual cards and chargebacks, enabling faster reconciliation and fewer disruptions to daily payment flows.
Risk & Compliance Lead
Manages supplier and exposure risk confidently, knowing that card-scheme guarantees protect the business from cascading airline failures.

Repair aggregator margins with embedded issuing and low-cost collections

Bed banks, flight consolidators and car rental aggregators operate on margins as thin as three to five percent. Interchange, acquirer and card acceptance fees quickly turn profit into loss.

Embedding virtual card issuing for supplier payments – and using low-cost rails for collections – restores margin, control and unit economics.

built-in payment options for a seamless travel booking
How embedded issuing and low-cost collections protect margin:
  • Use high-interchange virtual cards to pay suppliers and earn rebates on every transaction.
  • Replace costly card acceptance with automated bank-transfer or wallet-to-wallet collections.
  • Orchestrate both flows within your platform to achieve full control, visibility and reconciliation.
What customers want:

Aggregators and booking platforms want payment control that protects margin. They need seamless supplier settlement and collections without card-fee drag.

They’re seeking to preserve margin while retaining the transparency, security and automation of cards, with real-time visibility, multi-currency flexibility and smoother reconciliation across buy- and sell-side flows.

Capabilities you’ll need:
  • Virtual card issuing to optimise supplier payments and capture interchange rebates.
  • Weavr’s embedded payments to automate collections over wallet and bank-transfer rails.
  • Buy- and sell-side orchestration natively integrated into your booking and settlement flows.

Repair margins for travel aggregators

Deliver cost savings and control to every role involved in travel payment flows.
Commercial Finance Manager
Protects thin margins by reducing payment costs and improving visibility over supplier spend — turning payments from a cost centre into a profit lever.
Payments Operations Lead
Manages high-volume buy and sell flows more efficiently, automating card issuing and collections to keep transactions seamless and reconciled.
Supplier Relationship Manager
Benefits from faster, more reliable supplier payments that strengthen partnerships while maintaining control and optimising working capital.

Webinar: Protecting intermediaries from airline collapse

When an airline collapses, who really takes the hit? This eye-opening webinar reveals why intermediaries shoulder the hidden risk in every booking – and how a smarter blend of issuing and acquiring can flip the script. Hear from top industry insiders, uncover what the data doesn’t show, and discover how travel platforms can finally gain more protection.

Watch now

Blog: Thomas Cook's failure still haunts travel payments

Thomas Cook’s 2019 collapse exposed deep flaws in travel payments that still persist. Despite measures like virtual cards and trust accounts, fragmented data and siloed systems continue to obscure financial risk. Alex Mifsud calls for integrated acquiring and issuing under a shared data framework to enable transparency, resilience, and capital efficiency across the travel ecosystem.

Read the article

Blog: airline collapse doesn’t have to bankrupt intermediaries

Each airline collapse sets off a domino effect – travellers get refunds, but intermediaries foot the bill. The article reveals how embedding both issuing and acquiring in travel platforms can finally flip the equation, protecting intermediaries from insolvency and turning risk management into a new revenue opportunity.

Read the article

Blog: What if business travel expenses didn’t suck?

And how embedded finance can help with that. Everyone has a business travel expenses horror story to tell but the spend, claim and wait-for-reimbursement process shouldn’t be something employees have to grit their teeth through.

Read the research

Case study: NUMARQE makes credit work for the mid-cap business market

From legacy high street institutions, through to the more recent new wave of challenger banks, the UK is awash with business credit options. There’s just one problem, however – and it’s quite a big one: none of these options deliver what mid-cap companies actually need.

Read the article
Embedded finance and Numarqe

Ready for free expert advice?

Book a call with an embedded finance expert at Weavr to share your business travel product vision. We’ll show what’s working for similar apps, how we fit your stack, and help you build a business case.
Talk to an expert

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Webinar on travel intermediaries and the risk of airline failure - by Weavr

Webinar: The next airline collapse shouldn’t threaten intermediaries

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Webinar: Protection for airline collapse

Top travel experts outline how travel SaaS companies can pair issuing with acquiring to prevent the next Thomas Cook.

Watch now

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Weavr is the trading name under which Weavr Ltd (company registered in England and Wales with registration number 13433581) and Weavr (Europe) Ltd, (company incorporated and registered in Malta with company number C98895 whose registered office is at Ardent Business Centre, Triq l-Oratorju, Naxxar NXR 2504 Malta) provide services to legal entities in the UK (Weavr Ltd) and in the EU (Weavr (Europe) Ltd). Weavr Ltd and Weavr (Europe) Ltd are wholly owned subsidiaries of Paystratus Group Limited, a company registered in England and Wales with registration number 11677111 and registered office at 128 City Road, London EC1V 2NX United Kingdom.

For programmes operating in the European Union, the Payment account and Mastercard cards are issued by Paynetics AD with company address 76A James Bourchier Blvd, 1407 Sofia, Bulgaria, company registration number 131574695. Paynetics AD is an electronic money institution authorised and regulated by the Bulgarian National Bank for the issuance of e-money and provision of payment services in the EU. Weavr (Europe) Ltd is acting on behalf of Paynetics AD, as a registered agent on the territory of the EU member states, and is entered into the public register of e-money institutions’ agents kept by the Bulgarian National Bank.

For programmes operating in the United Kingdom, the Payment Account and Mastercard cards are issued by Paynetics UK, Company number 1248133. Paynetics UK is a wholly owned subsidiary of Paynetics AD with its registered address at 1st Floor, 18 Devonshire Row, London, England, EC2M 4RH. Paynetics UK is an electronic money institution authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (firm reference number 942777) for the issuance of e-money and provision of payment services in the UK. Weavr Ltd is a distributor of Paynetics UK on the territory of the UK.

To ensure your funds are safe, Paynetics AD and Paynetics UK follow a process known as ‘safeguarding’ which is a regulatory requirement for all EMIs. In this process Paynetics AD, respectively Paynetics UK, keeps your money separate from its own (firm) money and places it in a safeguarding account with a Bank.

Electronic Money issued is not covered by any Deposit Guarantee Scheme which is a government backed scheme offering protection to customers’ funds of up to €100,000 in the EU (£85,000 in the UK under the FSCS) per customer. However, in the event of an insolvency, your funds would remain in the safeguarded account at the designated Bank and separated from Paynetics’ accounts and funds. For further details on the safeguarding, visit https://www.paynetics.digital/safeguarding-of-clients-funds/

Weavr Ltd is registered in the UK as an agent of Yapily Connect Limited (Company No: 11598433), which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) under the Payment Services Regulations 2017 as an Authorised Payment Institution (Firm Reference Number: 827001), registered office: 86–90 Paul Street, London, EC2A 4NE.

Paystratus Group Limited provides software and support services to Weavr Ltd and Weavr (Europe) Ltd.
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