VIPFares is an online travel agency based in Moldova and the U.S., specializing in discounted business and first class airline tickets. With roughly 70 travel advisors, the team pairs private airline fares with dedicated support, managing everything from seat selection to hotel transfers. Since partnering with Slash in 2023, VIPFares has tripled its team and is expanding into the UK, Canada, Australia, and the UAE.
Paying airlines fast, without losing control of customer funds
Since we are kind of middleman between the customer and the airline. We are not owning the seats on the airplane, we just help booking those, and we need to pay the airline. Once we get the money from the customer, we have to pay to the airline. And here is the most important part, because you can pay it with wire transfer, or you can process the payment through the credit card. Usually whenever we acquire money we lose on the different transaction fees. There is an ability to recover and get some cashback when you pay to the airline, because they charge our virtual credit cards and we get the cashback. That's when in this process we use Slash.
If we would pass the customer's credit card to the airline directly, all the funds would be in control of the airline, and whenever it comes to the refund, they would wait for it like for a month, because usually they do not pay instantly. But in our case, when we charge the money from the customer and pay to the airline, if the customer needs a refund, we can refund from our own funds and wait for the refund from the airline for a longer time. We can wait for it just to give the customer this kind of smooth experience, when they don't have to wait like a month to get their own funds.
Keeping card risk contained across a large advisor team
We use a single credit card per booking. We set the limit for this credit card, usually it's the same amount as we are planning to spend, or close to that. Once we pay to the airline, once they charge the credit card, we usually pause it. We have some cases. Six months or so ago, we used the credit card just with one booking and one airline, and somehow we got some attempts to charge our credit card. I believe there was a call center somewhere in Johannesburg, and they somehow wrote down those numbers and later tried to buy something from some online stores. So since that time we decided, from now on we will use it just per one booking, and we will post all the credit cards after the actual charge, and that's it. This works very well, because the blast radius right now is very low and small, and almost nothing bad can happen with this kind of workflow.
Banking across an international operation
Usually those platforms that give you the opportunity to issue cashback cards do not provide banking services. So, for example, you cannot make a wire transfer to your sub-agents or some contractors. Usually they expect that you just deposit some money and use it to get the cashback, and that's it. But with Slash it's very convenient that you also have a banking account, and you can make those wire transfers, which is very good.
On the Slash team itself
What I like the most is that we have direct access to all the people there. We can communicate through, say, Telegram, or we can write an email and get almost instant answers. And that was like even when we started to work with you two years ago. I remember when we just signed the contract, it was almost instant communication. After my email there was a response, and we set up the call in 15 minutes, and we discussed everything, and it was pretty easy.
Would you recommend Slash to other travel agencies?
I would say that first of all it's a competitive product. You have good rates, good cashback rates, they are competitive. And as I mentioned, there is a bank account, which is a very good point for many companies, especially those who are starting internationally.
Eldar Rzaev, COO & Co-Founder, VIPFares
