Payment methods

If you are implementing a Search, look and book integration, and want to learn about the available payment methods keep reading.

Chose the right method

Demand API offers a wide range of payment methods for your bookings. Depending on the nature of your business, certain payment methods may or may not be relevant.

→ Look at the available methods per partner type and learn more about each of it, so you can then apply the right configuration for your use case.

Available methods	Partner type
✓ Virtual Credit Card (VCC)1	Partners who are entitled to directly charge the traveller. Then pay Booking.com on behalf of the traveller.
✓ Credit card + Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) ✓ Credit Card (non SCA) ✓ Credit Card (non SCA) + Riskified	Partners who are not entitled to directly charge travellers and rely on Booking.com to charge travellers instead.
✓ Credit Card (non SCA) + MOTO	Corporate partners who pay hotels on behalf of their employees (business travellers).

¹ Corporate partners can also use VCC with an authorisation form (also known by "Payment instructions")

Methods

Virtual credit cards (VCC)

A virtual credit card is a digital version of a credit card that uses a disposable number that’s different from what’s on the physical card.

• This method adds an extra layer of protection in online and card-not-present transactions by preventing the physical card’s information from being exposed.
• It generates individual digit card numbers and expiration dates for each transaction. With the unique number the payee can only access the preapproved amount of funds.

This Online payment method allows partners from all regions to pay on behalf of the traveller.

• VCC is allowlisted as payments in low-risk situations.
• As per regulation, virtual cards transactions are exempted from Strong Customer Authentication (SCA).

Applicable payment scenarios

This payment method is available to all partners.

However, this is mainly used by Partners who are entitled to pay on travellers behalf and by some Corporate partners when either paying at property (what is known by "Payment instructions") or paying online.

Credit cards

Cards are linked to a debit or credit account at a bank and are the most common method for online and pay at property payments across different countries.

By using this payment method our partners can book prepaid rates with travellers credit cards via our API.

To be able to adapt to travellers payment preferences, Demand API supports a wide range of global and local cards:

Global				Local

You can see the full list of supported cards using the common/payments/cards endpoint.

Applicable payment scenarios

In general, credit cards are mainly used as payment method in the following scenarios:

• For those Partners who are not entitled to directly charge the traveller, neither pay on their behalf.
• Regular travellers also use credit cards as payment method, to either pay for or secure their bookings.
• Corporate travellers uses credit card with Mail Order Telephone Order (MOTO) method for offline transactions.

Geographic considerations

To provide the appropriate level of security and comply with different regulations across regions for online cards payments, our API supports different authentication options that you can set depending on your needs:

Credit card + Strong Customer Authentication (SCA)

Use this option for transactions that need to comply with Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) which is mandatory in European Economic Area regulations.

• You require a Payment service provider (PSP) with token generation capability, as a token needs to be shared with Booking, when sending the order/create request.

Credit card (SCA exempt)

SCA exemption allows transactions to be exempted from Strong Customer Authentication requirements. However, for an additional security layer, this method requires a third party fraud protection service in place.

• Fraud protection is performed by partners 3rd party provider.
• This is a method mainly used for travellers in the US.

Credit card + Riskified

This is an Online payment method in which partners can book prepaid rates with travellers credit cards by sharing a Riskified session ID via the Demand API.

Riskified is a fraud screening solution that you can use to maintain low chargeback for processing credit card payments where authentication is not a legislative requirement.

Use this option to provide fraud detection support for non-SCA transactions.

Credit card + MOTO payments

The MOTO is a type of credit card transaction made by telephone or email.

This Online payment (pay_online_now) method is mainly used by Corporate partners who can book prepaid rates by classifying their offline bookings as MOTO transactions in our Demand API.

Check the supported payment methods

To know which payments methods are accepted by a property, use the following endpoints:

Type		Endpoint	Response
	Pay at property	Run /accommodations/details	It returns the set of methods (payment cards and/or cash) that a property accepts when paying at the property at checkin date.
	Online payment	Run /orders/preview	It returns the set of methods that a property accepts to secure the reservation: For pay online now / later, securing the reservation also means paying for it. For pay at property, the payment methods shown in /orders/preview might be only used for cancellation and no show fees.