CellPoint Digital and Xcaret Team on Payments Orchestration

CellPoint Digital has teamed with Mexico’s Grupo Xcaret to streamline travel payments.

“With nearly 40 million foreign tourists expected to visit Mexico in 2023, having a secure, efficient and cross-border payment solution is key for the travel industry,” the companies said in a news release Tuesday (May 23). 

The partnership allows CellPoint Digital to offer its payments orchestration platform to Xcaret, one of Mexico’s largest entertainment, travel and hospitality firms.

According to the release, the platform simplifies payments across all channels, countries and currencies, while helping drive conversion rates, customer engagement and growth, and letting businesses cut payments costs.

“The CellPoint Digital platform enables us to simplify our payment processes across one single point of integration, and we’re confident it’s going to make a positive impact on our business and the Mexican travel industry as a whole,” said Hector Salceda, eCommerce director at Xcaret.

The partnership is happening amid a period of recovery for international travel, one that — as PYMNTS wrote Tuesday, makes “a strong case for travel merchants to up their performance when it comes to streamlining local requirements, managing foreign exchange (FX), and providing consumers with payment methods of choice.”

In an interview with PYMNTS, Ivan Guerrero, director of Airlines and Travel EMEA – Digital Commerce Division at Worldline, said that as international travel continues its rebound, merchants can make the most of that momentum by providing efficient and localized cross-border payments.

This is “very important when we talk about an industry such as the airline and travel industry, which is global by essence,” he said, “but very local if you want to reach the consumers in their own language, in their own currency, in their own country,” as they browse and reserve travel.

Guerrero pointed to preferred local payment methods as the chief consideration, along with optimizing currency conversion. 

“If I am in Thailand, if I’m a Thai consumer, I want to ensure that I can pay in my own currency,” he said. “That gives me comfort, that gives me security, and that makes it … easier for me to click on that buy button.”

Meanwhile, CellPoint Digital co-founder and CEO Kristian Gjerding penned a recent piece for PYMNTS about his focus on streamlining travel payments with payments orchestration.

“Customers now expect a seamless, simple payments process as standard, and the sellers who can’t offer that will miss out on huge opportunities and limit their growth potential,” he wrote.

“Our prediction is that the businesses that fail to tackle these challenges head-on will fall behind, burdened by issues such as cost, processing times, security and legal concerns.”