eBay travel rumour – Paypal and flyMonarch.com

Yesterday I was working away (very busy at the moment) when the phone rang. They said it was Paypal on the phone. My first reaction was – what have we done wrong? Has someone undertaken some fraud that we need to react to on our system? (see how I think!)

No – it turned out that it was in fact a PR agency asking me to write a post about how the flyMonarch.com low cost airline now take Paypal payments. I told them I don’t do news and wouldn’t post anything as TravelMole had already covered it fairly well and I couldn’t add anything sensible. (read article – registration required). Do people think I am a news website or something?

But then I thought – hey – I have this Paypal PR person on the phone. I asked them about Skype and their recent problems…. and about eBay’s secret travel strategy…. nope – they wouldn’t tell me anything unless it was about Paypal. Boring.

Then my project management background kicks in….. when I get bored in meetings I always ask the word “why” – and if no one can answer sensibly – we don’t do it. So I ask this PR person – why would an airline want to take Paypal when they have an existing credit card system? What is their USP? I didn’t get any answer either on the phone – nor later when they said they were going to get back to me. (OK – we have some press though – that helped me)

Therefore I have come up with some ideas….. some unlikely, some completely speculation…. you have to decide which are which!

Are flyMonarch getting close to a PCI credit card security audit rules level?
There are all sorts of new credit card data security rules that are just coming in at the moment (globally). Many of these require additional levels of IT auditing and IT security than has been the case upto this point. This is costly to introduce and can take time. However, if flyMonarch could move some of their transactions from their credit card system to Paypal – then maybe they will stay below one of the transaction volume auditing levels… and put off some of the security work – perhaps to another financial year….. however this all sounds a bit unlikely to me.

Is it a web usability improvement?
This would appear to be the line that FlyMonarch want to tell us:

“It also gives registered travel agents who book on flyMonarch.com another flexible way to pay and manage their booking activity without having to rely on credit or debit cards.” (Liz Savage, FlyMonarch.com Managing Director)

The standard credit card entry…

The new Paypal entry (notice you don’t put your credit card details in)….

Low cost carriers do not tend to offer commission and are not very well distributed via travel agency systems (by their own choice) (I don’t know about FlyMonarch but I assume they work like this - I am sure someone will correct me).

Therefore these flights are often booked by travel agents directly on the airline website using either the customer’s own card (which is complex to keep track of and has security implications) or by the travel agent using the agency credit card (but this requires the agency to share the card details will all their frontline travel agency staff – which isn’t ideal).

Paypal may be a really clever way to let your front line sales staff make bookings using the shared corporate card – but without everyone in your company knowing the card details (as it means the details don’t have to be entered each time a new booking is added).

I am sure that if it was this clever that Liz would have said so – wouldn’t she? (Because this use of Paypal may not have been immediately obvious to all travel agents – so would need to be clearly stated as a key message in the press that was sent out). This does raise some element of doubt in my mind that this usability line is the right one…..

Are Paypal working on getting “trophy clients” within travel?
Maybe Paypal are looking to get a few new clients on board within travel. These are the clients that other companies look at – and go – wow – they have Paypal – then go and add it to their own system.

Is this an eBay push with Paypal as a trojan horse?
eBay own Paypal. eBay have been working on a travel strategy (but no one knows what it is) – Travolution have an interesting article about it. We also know that Paypal likes travel (when both Amazon Payments and Google Checkout refuse to take travel company clients)….. 

Maybe flyMonarch are part of this new dynamic packaging system that eBay are rumoured to be building. flyMonarch may not even know this themselves…. it could be a very clandestine operation for eBay?

Summary
I ran all these questions and ideas past the Paypal PR when they called me…. so they knew what I was going to write…. they didn’t deny it… and could have come back to deny it if they had wished. They missed that opportunity so I have published. Perhaps there is something in all these rumours about eBay after all.

Anyway, they can hardly complain – I wrote up their news didn’t I? – which is what they asked me to do!

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