Booking.com has quietly transformed itself from a hotel reservation platform into one of the world’s most sophisticated travel fintech operations. Behind this evolution sits a 1,000-person FinTech business unit enabling seamless payments across flights, accommodations, experiences, and attractions with more than 60% of total revenue now flowing through its Payments by Booking merchant of record model. 

As the payments landscape becomes increasingly fragmented, travel companies face unique challenges in facilitating seamless cross-border transactions whilst offering consumers their preferred payment methods.  

Martin Wallraff, Director at Payments Consulting Network, spoke with Ajay Moti, Head of Global Card Network Partnerships at Booking.com, to explore the strategic importance of card network partnerships in global travel, the complexities of enabling payments across diverse markets, his view on Open Banking, and the unique challenge of facilitating money movement when a traveller holding a US credit card pays for a hotel in Thailand. 

Read the full interview below. 

Martin Wallraff: Can you introduce your role at Booking.com? 

Ajay Moti: My role is specifically focused on our global partnerships with the card networks – Visa, Mastercard and American Express. We oversee everything globally for Booking.com from the Netherlands, as well as our UK office some of our colleagues are based. 

MW: How does your role fit within Booking’s broader payments function? 

AM: I’m part of what we call the FinTech business unit, which has scaled to around 1,000 people over the past 4-5 years. FinTech enables payments across all the different business units within Booking.com whether you’re booking a flight, hotel, experience, home, or attraction. 

The fundamental shift happened when we moved from being just a reservation platform to becoming merchant of record. Historically, Booking.com never actually facilitated payments. We were simply the middleman between a traveller and a hotel partner. Being in the money flow allows us to add significant value to partners who don’t want to handle payments themselves. Now 60% of our total revenue is driven by our merchant model, which is what we call Payments by Booking. 

MW: What does Payments by Booking entail? 

AM: Payments by Booking is a merchant of record model where Booking facilitates all the payments, cancellation policies, fraud, chargebacks, and incorporation of local and alternative payment methods on behalf of the partner. This is all manageable through an intranet that partners can log into. 

Being in the money flow enables us to offer features like faster settlement and faster payouts. The core payments team that I am part of is responsible for all relationships with PSPs, card networks, and APMs/LPMs. We also have a sister team that focuses on payouts which isa significant portion of which are paid via virtual credit card, and that’s gaining more traction within the Payments by Booking proposition. 

Most of our penetration is in Western Europe, with the US as a growth market, along with APAC. In markets where we don’t offer virtual credit cards, we offer bank payouts, so it doesn’t necessarily hinder the growth of Payments by Booking, but the virtual card proposition is definitely a value add for our partners. 

We’re looking to expand beyond these core markets. Part of my role is to help spearhead rollout in markets with more nuances, for example in Latin America and Asia. Some geographies are more challenging to enter than others, especially with different compliance and central bank regulations markets like India and Brazil. 

MW: How do the card networks factor into your strategy? 

AM: The networks primarily come into the picture around local acquiring decisions whether we have the ability to facilitate local acquiring vs cross-border in a given market. Beyond geographic expansion, we work directly with the schemes on card optimisation, whether that’s on cost or conversion. 

We oversee everything from authentication to authorisation to fraud and chargeback every aspect of the payment lifecycle. We’re also the commercial partnership owner of optimisations and lifecycle management, for example, network tokens, alongside our product and tech teams. When evaluating providers, we’re responsible for understanding the ecosystem, capabilities, and geographic scope. 

MW: What are you looking for when evaluating PSP partners? 

AM: Local acquiring capabilities are number one, which directly impacts my team’s work. Beyond that, we consider the LPMs and APMs available through that provider. 

We think strategically about markets that might not be tier one today but could gain traction in two or three years. I’m making this up, but markets like Turkey, Indonesia, or Vietnam, which see a lot of tourism but aren’t as mature financially as Western Europe or North America. 

It’s a significant investment to integrate a new PSP from technical, contractual, treasury, and settlement perspectives. We want partners we can grow with over the next three, five, ten years. Interoperability is also crucial whether for routing strategy or tokenisation capabilities. For example, can they utilise a third-party token if we’re using that? We also look at value-added services beyond pure acquiring, whether that’s fraud tooling, dynamic routing, or other products innovative global PSPs are offering. 

MW: How do you approach alternative payment methods? 

AM: We’re quite fast-moving with APMs and LPMs. We have strong PSP partners, so enabling new payment methods via third-party PSPs is relatively straightforward, allowing us to be somewhat of an early adopter on those payment methods. 

MW: Where do you see the key challenges in travel payments? 

AM: Making sure we have the right payment methods for the right consumers and reducing friction. That could be through tokenisation, saved cards, or evaluating solutions like open banking and BNPL. I’m watching what Wero is doing with interest. 

Certain markets present specific challenges for example, Brazil and Mexico require instalment offerings. One of the bigger challenges for a large ecommerce company like ours is facilitating money movement when a traveller holds a card issued in one country and is paying a partner in another. How do we ensure a hotel in Thailand receives Thai baht in the exact amount expected whilst allowing the traveller to pay with their preferred US credit card? That’s the challenge that Payments by Booking is trying to solve.  

Each party has different needs partners want faster payouts and reconciliation, whilst travellers want payment flexibility. What is the next Pix? What is the next UPI? Perhaps Wero will have a similar impact in the EU. 

MW: How does Open Banking fit into this picture? 

AM: My personal impression is that whilst open banking receives significant attention, penetration remains quite low. The checkout experience isn’t as smooth as traditional cards, and you’re missing elements like a chargeback mechanism from a consumer standpoint. Getting a bank account linked and set up as a first-time consumer can be quite tedious. Unless consumers are incentivised in some way, the use case over a credit card, especially in the US, where rewards-based cards are common, isn’t immediately clear to me. 

MW: Any interesting experiences from your time in payments? 

AM: It’s remarkable to see how far payments technology has come in just 10 years. When I joined Adyen, there were around 150 people globally now it’s over 4,000. The volume of payments being processed by Adyen in 2014 versus now is staggering. 

Those were true startup days I was in a US office of 20 people, so we handled everything ourselves. During Black Friday, everyone was on support ticket duty because there were only two support people in the entire US for Adyen. With engineering based in Amsterdam and a nine-hour time difference to San Francisco, those were challenging but fun times. 

MW: What are you looking forward to at FTT? 

AM: Two main things: learning about new trends whether agentic commerce, stablecoins, or other hot topics and networking. These events facilitate valuable informal chats with other merchants and industry professionals. For me, it’s about fact-finding, making new connections, and building on existing relationships. 

MW: You’re joining a session as a speaker? 

AM: Yes, I’ll be on the “Personalised payments: Choice in a fragmented world” panel, which builds directly on many of the topics we’ve discussed today around local payment methods and the complexity of serving diverse markets. 

MW: Ajay, thanks a lot for your time. 

AM: Thank you. 

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Author: Martin Wallraff, Director, London, Payments Consulting Network 

Martin brings over 20 years of experience in financial services. For the past decade, he has specialised in payments, fintech, and transaction banking, advising clients on strategy, market entry, product development, and go-to-market. 

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Payments Consulting Network is a media partner for the FTT Fintech Festival.  

Ajay Moti, Head of Global Card Network Partnerships at Booking.com, will join a panel discussion on “Personalised payments: Choice in a fragmented world” on 11 November at 14:35 (FTT Payments Stage). 

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