How VIPFARES Scales Premium Airline Bookings With Slash

VIPFARES is a U.S.-based premium travel agency with a team of roughly 70 travel advisors worldwide, combining discounted airline fares with dedicated support for its customers. Since partnering with Slash in 2023, VIPFARES has tripled its team size and plans to expand into the UK, Canada, Australia, and the UAE.

VIPFARES sells business and first class airline tickets at prices that often land 40 to 50 percent below public booking sites. Each customer works with an advisor who books the ticket and then handles seat selection, car rentals, wheelchair arrangements, airport transfers, and more.

"We are the middleman between the customer and the airline," said Eldar Rzaev, COO and co-owner. "We do not own the seats on the airplane, we just help book them, so we need to pay the airline."

How Slash Cards help VIPFARES support its customers

When you move money on a customer's behalf, margins are everything, and it's the smaller costs that add up: processing fees come out of every customer payment, and the margin on a discounted premium-cabin ticket does not leave much room. Getting the most out of every transaction is core to how VIPFARES runs, and earning rewards on that spend is one of the ways the agency keeps its pricing sharp for clients.

"There is an ability to recover some cashback when you pay to the airline, because they charge our virtual cards and we get the cashback," Rzaev said.¹ "That's why we use Slash for this."

At VIPFARES, an advisor issues a Slash virtual card for each customer purchase, the airline charges it for the ticket, and the cashback on that charge offsets part of what it costs VIPFARES to collect the payment in the first place, helping keep VIPFARES competitive on price. The agency puts its other recurring costs on Slash cards for the same reason: advertising, servers, IT subscriptions, and more.

VIPFARES could stay out of the payment process entirely by handing the customer's card number to the airline instead of using their own company cards. Refunds are why the agency doesn't.

"If we would pass the customer's credit card to the airline directly, all the funds would be in control of the airline. Whenever it comes to the refund, the customer would wait for a month because the airline usually does not pay instantly," Rzaev said. "But in our case, 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."

Because VIPFARES pays the airline with its own card, the customer's money sits with the agency rather than the airline. When someone cancels, VIPFARES sends the refund from its own account and waits on the airline's reimbursement itself, so the customer doesn't have to.

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How virtual card limits stop fraud from spreading

Handling each payment on behalf of their customers means VIPFARES's card numbers get entered into airline systems and outside call centers around the world. About six months ago, one of them got out; a card the company used for a booking started collecting unrecognized charge attempts.

"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," Rzaev said.

The company's Slash dashboard caught the unusual card activity from its AI-assisted fraud prevention capabilities, which learn from a company's typical transaction patterns and preset rules and notify administrators when something looks suspicious. VIPFARES was able to catch the fraud quickly, turn off the card, and adjust its protection measures accordingly.

Every booking at VIPFARES now gets its own Slash virtual card, each with a spend limit set at or near the price of the ticket. Once the airline's charge goes through, the advisor who created the card for the booking pauses it to prevent any additional charges.

"This works very well, because the blast radius right now is very low and small. Almost nothing bad can happen with this kind of workflow," Rzaev said.

Why a company card needs a bank account attached

VIPFARES's business model relies on two things: the agency needs cards that earn rewards on airline payments, and it needs to pay sub-agents and contractors in several countries. Rzaev said most rewards-focused cards only do the first.

"Usually platforms that give you the opportunity to issue cashback cards do not provide banking services," he said. "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 bank account, and you can make those wire transfers."

What's next for VIPFARES

Rzaev expects his team size to double again over the next year. Additionally, VIPFARES plans to expand into the UK, Canada, Australia, and the UAE; build iOS and Android apps so customers can book and message their advisor from a phone; and take on B2B clients who want the agency to run their internal travel desk. Growth on that scale means more advisors issuing more cards in more currencies, and Rzaev plans to run all of it on Slash.

Asked whether he would recommend Slash to other travel agencies, Rzaev described Slash as a product that gives his company an edge. “You have good cashback rates, they are competitive. And there is the bank account, which is very good for many companies, especially those who are starting internationally.

Two years in, Rzaev said the access to Slash's team matters to him as much as the product does.

"What I like the most is that we have direct access to all the people [at Slash]. We can communicate and get almost instant answers," he said. "I remember when we just signed the contract, after my email there was a response, and we set up the call in 15 minutes. It was very easy."

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