The Payment Provider used by AxisRooms (and European Partner AccuBook) is Worldpay (http://www.worldpay.com/, owned by the Royal Bank of Scotland).
Essentially in Europe the most popular payment method is for a customer to pay a deposit ie 15% of the total value of the package or room.
This has several advantages
A. The customer 'thinks' they are risking less online because they are only paying a deposit.
B. In effect this is a 'Customer Present' transaction because the customer MUST pay the balance on arrival. We have never had a fraudulent transaction for this reason. If 100% of the value of the room was taken it is theoretically possible for the customers to book, arrive and leave before the fact that the credit card is fraudulent becomes known. However the need to present the credit card on arrival prevents this.
C. The deposit normally equals the commission charged by AxisRooms so that there is no need to organise the transfer of money or fees between the Hotel and the Travel Agent.
This system is fully secure in the sense that we do NOT pass the credit card details to the hotel and current legislation (PCI COmpliance) governing credit card transaction will soon mean that the hotels will be HAPPY that we dont pass the credit card details to them.
This of course leaves the obvious question; 'What happens in the event of a no show?'
If this happens the hotel can apply to us and we will pass on the credit card details, however we tend to find that this is extremely rare. The customer 'believes' that the credit card details ARE held by the hotel, during the transaction they are asked to approve the hotels terms and conditions, and therefore the quantity of no shows is very rare, on average as low as twice per year.
We technically integrate with Worldpay in an 'invisible' manner ie We try and keep the customer on the hotel website, not 'step them off' onto the Worldpay site.
At present the transaction with the customer is in the base currency selected by the hotel (ie Rupees in India), but we soon hope to allow customers to view in their base currency but pay in the currency of their choice (ie Dollars/Euros)
Customers who book via Worldpay receive 2 confirmations within 2 minutes of booking;
1. An automatic confirmation from the hotel confirming all the details of the booking.
2. A receipt from Worldpay confirming what has been charged to their credit card.
I would invite anyone who wishes to test the system to check out some of our 'live' websites.
http://www.inishowengateway.com/
http://www.cromleach.com/
If anyone would like to make a full 'Test Transaction' then please do so on our Sample Site http://www.samplehotel.net/ where you can test the full purchase from start to finish as customer would do so. (Simply use an existing credit card to make the booking, nothing will be charged to it because the site is in text mode).
Hotels can request the code that allows them to integrate the Booking Engine into their website on a hideen page that the customer does not see (this is simply done) they can then test the Payment Process in 'Test Mode'.