PayPal travel payments for travel companies using TourCMS

You may not use PayPal to sell travel services unless you are appropriately registered and licensed in all states in which you do business Generally, individuals or businesses that sell travel packages, travel certificates, or operate travel clubs must be registered and become licensed travel sellers in all states where they do business or have customers. Please visit the California Tourism website for more details on California’s travel selling laws.

Travel agents, promoters, and other businesses selling travel services
If you sell, advertise, or arrange air or sea travel (but do not directly provide the travel service yourself), you may use PayPal to sell air and ship related travel items (for example, airplane tickets and cruise trips) only if you are licensed as a seller of travel lawfully able to do business. You must be prepared to provide PayPal with your travel license number. For travel services other than air or sea travel, you may offer gift certificates or coupons that are issued by a specific provider of travel, such as a gift certificate to a particular hotel.

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home > support > taking PayPal payments Taking PayPal payments with TourCMS With more than 150 million accounts in 190 countries, PayPal offers a fast, affordable and convenient online payment service for businesses of all sizes. (However your customers don't have to have a PayPal account in order to pay online) The great news for small travel companies (who make up the majority of TourCMS users) is that PayPal accept travel companies (Unlike Google). Here is an excerpt from the PayPal Terms & Conditions: You may not use PayPal to sell travel services unless you are appropriately registered and licensed in all states in which you do business Generally, individuals or businesses that sell travel packages, travel certificates, or operate travel clubs must be registered and become licensed travel sellers in all states where they do business or have customers. Please visit the California Tourism website for more details on California’s travel selling laws. Travel agents, promoters, and other businesses selling travel services If you sell, advertise, or arrange air or sea travel (but do not directly provide the travel service yourself), you may use PayPal to sell air and ship related travel items (for example, airplane tickets and cruise trips) only if you are licensed as a seller of travel lawfully able to do business. You must be prepared to provide PayPal with your travel license number. For travel services other than air or sea travel, you may offer gift certificates or coupons that are issued by a specific provider of travel, such as a gift certificate to a particular hotel. Examples (Use cases) Taking a deposit payment from a web booking Customer makes a booking using the online booking engine In the automatic confirmation email you configure TourCMS to add a link to your PayPal payment page (using the %paypal_balance_dn_sale% token) If the full balance is due, the customer will be prompted to pay the entire balance. If they just owe the deposit, they can pay that PayPal takes the payment. The money is available in your PayPal account PayPal sends a message via IPN to TourCMS. This message contains booking information TourCMS adds the new payment to the booking and reduces the remaining balance (automatically) Taking a "balance" payment from an existing booking Member of staff accesses the TourCMS balance reports section and notices that a customer has an overdue balance They go to the booking in TourCMS and to a pre-configured email template used for chasing overdue payments A "chase" email is sent to the customer (the %paypal_balance_sale% token is replaced with a PayPal payment link) The email, sent via TourCMS, is stored in the booking (for audit trail purposes) The customer receives the email, follows the payment link and goes to PayPal The payment, once made by the customer, is recorded back on the original booking in TourCMS (and the remaining balance, if now fully paid, is reduced to zero The member of staff can, every so often, review recently received payments. They can mark a payment as "reconciled" within TourCMS to confirm they have checked the payment How to setup PayPal Sign up for a PayPal account (Business or Premier) Take a note of the email address you have used associated with your PayPal account In TourCMS, Configuration & Setup, go to the Payments section. Add the email address you used for your PayPal account In PayPal, in the Profile section, go to Instant Payment Notification Preferences (IPN). Add the IPN URL that TourCMS gives you (that you can see in the TourCMS payments section). Activate Instant Payment Notifications for your PayPal account The key TourCMS email tokens %paypal_balance_sale% - The outstanding balance owed (on the booking) (in sale currency) %paypal_deposit_sale% - The initial deposit payment required (in sale currency) %paypal_balance_dn_sale% - The money owed by the customer NOW (in sale currency). Normally follows the logic of deposit owed, then zero, then, when due, the full balance. However, if the booking is made within the full balance due period, this will be set to the full balance immediately %paypal_novalue% - No value sent to PayPal. An input box will be given to the customer (within PayPal) for the customer to determine how much they want to pay (in sale currency) These tokens correspond to similar tokens for the values (as explained in the documentation manual) There are also 3 additional tokens that include an appropriate credit card fee to the payment value (see below for explanation) i.e. If you have configured a 3% credit card fee and the customer owes 100 GBP, these tokens will request 103 GBP %paypal_balance_sale_fee% %paypal_deposit_sale_fee% %paypal_balance_dn_sale_fee% TourCMS emails are sent in HTML format (rather than plain text format) - hence you can, in your email template, use this format: <a href="%paypal_deposit_sale%">Pay your deposit via PayPal<a/> This will "hide" the complex PayPal URL from your customers and keep your emails neat and tidy. Credit card fees Often travel companies pass on the charge of letting the customer pay by credit card directly to the customer. For example, if PayPal charge you 3%, you may add a 3% credit card fee to all payments that the customer makes. TourCMS can handle this for you. In the payments section of Configuration & Setup tick to enable fee. (You can also adjust if the fee is commissionable, has sales tax added or is to be assigned to a specific supplier). The customer owes 100 GBP.... Method A You charge the customer 103 GBP with a 3% credit card fee added. The customer will pay 103 GBP via PayPal and 103 GBP will be reduced from the outstanding balance. A 3 GBP fee will be added to the booking. Method B You charge the customer 100 GBP with a 3% credit card fee included. The customer will pay 100 GBP via PayPal and 100 GBP will be reduced from the outstanding balance. A 2.91 GBP fee will be added to the booking. Method B works fine for deposit payments - but not for full balance payments (as it leaves money owing). Depending upon what tokens you put in your communications with your customers, you can choose which way to use PayPal. (Or you can just leave automated credit card fees turned off!) Fees will not appear on travel itinerary reports - but do appear on financial statements. Virtual terminal payments The PayPal virtual terminal enables you to charge a customer's credit card yourself (for example if you have taken payment details over the phone or via paper booking form / fax). TourCMS will handle bookings made by the PayPal virtual terminal.... however first you need to determine what kind of virtual terminal you are using (and configure it appropriately in TourCMS credit card payment section). Payflow Pro - UK merchant accounts use Payflow Pro. Put the TourCMS booking reference in the Customer first name field. (You can put the full customer name in the customer surname field if you wish) PayPal Pro - Most US merchant accounts use PayPal Pro. Put the TourCMS booking reference in the Item name/Service field when making a virtual terminal payment Other notes TourCMS will only "match" a payment to a booking where the currency paid in PayPal matches the sale currency of the TourCMS booking Payments will come through as having been made by the lead customer. We can tweak this for agent or secondary customer payments (Contact TourCMS support for details) A second PayPal email address can be configured within TourCMS. This can be used to assist moving between one PayPal account and another - or for companies with multiple PayPal accounts. A second set of document tokens exists with this second address used in place of the primary one (see documentation manual for details) Sign up for a business PayPal account

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Taking PayPal payments with TourCMS