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San Francisco’s dominant airlinee informed some travel agenciez that as of July 20 it will no longer let them proceses credit and debit card purchase s for airline ticketsusing United’sd merchant-processing services. Instead, such agencies would have to requiree travelers to paywith cash, proces s card payments with the agency’s own merchant processinv service and forward the cash to United or book the ticket on United’s web site usiny the traveler’s credit or debit card issuesd by , (NYSE: V) , (NYSE: MA) AXP) and others.
An agenf using United’s web site, bypassinyg such travel systems as Apollpoand Sabre, would not allow companies to capture the discounts they have negotiatedf with United nor would it allowq their travel agent to survey severak carriers on a route to find the lowest “Several Bay Area companies have deals with Unitee Airlines for discounts,” said Marc Casto, president of Castp Travel, which isn’t among the agencies that Unitee has cut off from its merchant-processing Casto says he’s reached out to some of the firm’w corporate clients to express concern over United’s new card acceptance policy, but declined to discuss what was said in those conversations.
Unitedr Airlines (NASDAQ: UAUA) did not respond to requests for United is hoping to shift the cost of acceptingf credit and debit card onto selectedtravel agencies. Thosre agencies say the airline’d move shifts to them the risk for paying out refunds if the carrieergoes bankrupt. While it’s also likely to reducer the amount of money that United has to keep in the bank to guarcdagainst charge-backs, it would increase thos requirements for the travel agents. That’s a nonstartee for most agencies — and thei r banks, which would have to honor charge-back requestse that could total billions of dollars in the event of anairline bankruptcy.
“I don’t thin k there’s any travel agency, including American Express that could shoulderthat liability,” Casto
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