The travel CFO’s guide to building a scalable, global payment stack

For travel CFOs, payments used to be a line item on the P&L to negotiate once a year. In 2026, that’s no longer enough. Travel businesses are selling, collecting, and paying in a web of different currencies - all while navigating ‘high-risk’ labels and razor-thin margins.

The hidden costs of a legacy stack

The first red flag is often the phrase: 'We’ve been with the same provider for 15 years.' While stability is good, legacy stacks are fragmented. You might have one provider for acquiring, another for FX, and a third for supplier payouts. Travel models amplify this inefficiency; one booking often triggers multiple back-end transactions (flights, hotels, transfers). Every ‘hop’ is an opportunity for FX fees, delays, and errors to eat your net margin.

The travel-specific problem: 15,000 Suppliers

In standard e-commerce, a purchase is simple. In travel, a single booking ID can touch dozens of parties. Matching what you’ve collected from a traveler to what you owe 15,000 different suppliers - in the right currency and on the right timeline - is the ultimate CFO challenge.

Matching as a first principle

Rebecca’s advice to CFOs is simple: matching is key. A modern setup looks like this:

• Multi-currency acquiring & accounts: Use local acquiring to collect payments in the guest’s native currency, then settle and hold those balances in 20+ currencies—bypassing forced conversions and cross-border fees entirely.

• Like-for-like settlement: If you collect in EUR, settle in EUR. Don't let a bank take a 2–3% cut just to move money into a GBP account when you'll eventually need those Euros to pay a hotel in Spain.

• Integrated spend management: Beyond the booking itself, using a robust spend management software to empower your team is a no brainer. By issuing virtual and physical cards with built-in spend controls, you can manage everything from marketing SaaS to on-the-ground travel expenses in the same ecosystem you use for supplier payouts - ensuring no 'leakage' occurs at the operational level.

Build vs. buy: The ‘core vs. context’ rule

The ultimate goal for the modern CFO is to stop viewing payments as a cost of doing business and start seeing them as a lever for margin. Own the logic - your proprietary data model, booking rules, and approval policies - as this is your competitive advantage. Conversely, buy the plumbing by outsourcing regulated infrastructure like licenses, local payout rails, and card issuing to a partner built for multi-party complexity.

If it defines your guest experience, own it; if it requires a banking license, outsource it. This 'matching' strategy - integrating local acquiring, spend management, and virtual payouts - stops the 3% FX leak and transforms a fragmented stack into a streamlined, multi-currency engine designed for global scale.