The demand for travel trusts for merchant facilities has seen a significant upturn as the pandemic progresses and continues its negative impact across the travel industry – as consumers recoup their losses via card issuers.
Chargebacks have inevitably resulted when delays ensue in consumers receiving refunds for holidays cancelled owing to Government restrictions and border closures. Waved of chargebacks continue to be felt across the travel industry with the losses of hundreds of millions of pounds being borne initially by credit card companies but ultimately passed back to merchants.
Financial institutions have been and are likely to continue to revise their risk assessment of travel and what this means for merchant terms. This has shown in:-
- even longer periods of deferment of receipt by merchants of payments made by customers;
- higher service charges;
- the imposition of security terms;
- heightened difficulties in obtaining merchant facilities at all.
Thankfully, Serenity’s relations with the industry’s key suppliers of merchant services continues to improve despite their revised risk assessment of travel companies. A Serenity trust account can minimise the impact of merchant risk as funds held in trust are protected from the financial failure of a merchant.
