Wakanow.com, one of Africa’s largest travel sellers, offers a one-stop-shop booking portal. The company helps travelers research, plan and book attractive trips including air, accommodation, transfers and holiday packages.    

As part of its business transformation, Wakanow will use virtual cards to make payments to suppliers like airlines and hotels through Outpayce’s B2B Wallet. The adoption of the innovative digital wallet means the most appropriate virtual card is automatically generated to pay for each individual transaction, based on factors like currency, provider acceptance policies and Wakanow’s own payments strategy. 

With this powerful orchestration capability, Wakanow Group has the potential to enhance the optimization of outbound payments whilst gaining a global supplier pay-out capability that reduces the risk of fraud and simplifies the payment process.  

Bayo Adedeji, Group CEO, Wakanow said: “Payments are an integral part of our strategy, as coordinated by our subsidiary fintech company, Kalabash54.com. With this technology we can access a wide range of payment methods in any currency we need so we can pay suppliers quickly and easily using virtual cards. We don’t need to spend time reconciling payments to bookings and suppliers don’t need to wait 30 days to receive payment. How travel companies pay one another has been slow and complex but virtual cards bring the industry into the digital age.”    

Similarly, the CEO, Kalabash54.com, Ladi Ojuri also stated that: “working with Outpayce marks a significant leap forward in our payment capabilities. This innovative approach not only enhances our efficiency in handling supplier transactions but also strengthens our commitment to providing secure and seamless payment experiences. With this development, we can mitigate fraud risks, expedite payment processes, and ultimately deliver greater value to our partners and customers. This is a testament to our dedication to harnessing cutting-edge technology to drive the travel industry's growth and transformation.  

Claudio Santos, Head of Commercial, Travel Sellers, Outpayce added: “Savvy travel sellers are embracing virtual payments as a way to digitalize B2B pay-outs whilst generating incremental revenue and reducing manual reconciliation. Having the right insight, data and algorithm is crucial to ensuring the best payment method is matched to each transaction; and that can help our travel seller customers increase virtual card acceptance by 30%.” 

Virtual cards are single use card numbers generated specifically for each individual payment. This one-to-one relationship means travel companies no longer need to reconcile a long list of payments to an equally long list of bookings at the end of each month. In addition, the widely accepted payment method is resistant to fraud as the card number can only be used with a specified merchant, for a specified amount. When making payments with virtual cards certain issuers also offer rebates which can add an important source of incremental revenue for travel sellers. Outpayce B2B Wallet offers pre-paid, debit and credit cards from a wide range of issuers, covering 46 different currencies.