Virtual Card Management (VCC)

1. Operation

Major OTAs such as Booking.com, Expedia.com, hotels.com, and Agoda.com can collect payments at the time of booking. In such cases, they provide hoteliers not with the guest’s actual card information, but with an alias, a virtual card or VCC.

A virtual card, or VCC, is generally issued for restricted use in order to limit the risk of compromise. A virtual card is, in a sense, an alias for an existing card that can only be used starting on a specific date and from a defined MCC. In this case, in the tourism sector, a contract with MCC 7011 (HOTELS) is required in order to charge the card.

Thus, even if the card number fell into the hands of a malicious individual, that person would not be able to initiate a charge on the source card. Given the unique nature of the cards issued by these OTAs, it is generally impossible to perform authorization, pre-authorization, or verification requests at the time of the order.

If the card can only be charged on the day of the reservation, for example, by an MCC 7011, the issuer, typically MASTERCARD B2B PRODUCT, will return an error code for an invalid transaction (12).

➡️ Booking.com Virtual Cards
Booking.com uses virtual cards for certain destinations. Depending on the settings configured on the hotel’s website, a reservation may be made with or without a credit card authorization. If the hotelier has chosen to require a payment method, Booking.com will generate a virtual card and send it to the hotelier or their technical service provider. Following the COVID-19 crisis, Booking.com no longer authorizes charges to its virtual credit cards until one day after the guest checks in.   

Learn more about how Booking.com virtual cards work ➝

➡️ Expedia.com Virtual Cards
At Expedia, visitors can choose between paying at the hotel (Hotel Collect) or paying directly when they make their reservation (Expedia Collect). This option is called Expedia Traveler Preference (ETP). If a customer uses the Expedia Collect method, a virtual card will be generated.  

Learn more about how Expedia.com virtual cards work ➝

2. Managing Virtual Cards with CentralPay

The best way to store a VCC and be able to use it once it becomes available is to create a “Customer” and link the card to that customer.

There are two options available:

• Either the card is chargeable at the time of creation, and a verification request can be made when the customer is created,
• Either the card cannot be used when the customer is created, and the card must be added without verification. This does not mean that it cannot be used later on. It simply means that it should not be charged until a certain date. Generally, OTAs will have verified the card information beforehand to ensure that it is valid for charging.

Thus, creating a Customer in the CentralPay API allows you to tokenize the virtual card, secure its storage, and facilitate its use once the initial acceptance criteria have been met.