Issues with the reclamation of payments for cancellation has remained a consistent problem with electronic reservations. This is for a multitude of reasons, the main one being the multiple parties involved in the processing of any such refund. For example, the financial institutions will charge fees, then the service provider has to decide how to handle the processing of the refund with regards to how much of the commission they have offered the “Middleman”. There is also the issue that if it was a foreign currency transaction, the client will once again lose a few percentage of the transaction on the reverse trade. To add further insult to injury, many service providers will also charge their own cancellation fees and can take up to 30 working days to issue a refund. This is far from ideal. The unfortunate outcome is that it is not unusual for a consumer who has requested a refund to find themselves reimbursed a month later with only a fraction of what they paid and as a result have every right to be discontent with the outcome. Aside from the inconvenience of this unfair practice, it is damaging for the industry.

Having a simple one path gateway with minimum and transparent transaction fees and an almost instantaneous execution time will ensure that any refunds in the future would be almost instantaneous and with minimal inconvenience and minimal loss of funds. With the technology being available at the moment, it lacks all logic that this transition has not yet happened as it is more cost-effective and convenient for both the consumer and the service provider.

The existing and ineffective current pathway:

The efficient pathway: