What is billback?

Billback is a popular form of payment for hotel bookings.

Hayley Marsden avatar
Written by Hayley Marsden
Updated over a week ago

Billback provides a convenient alternative to paying a hotel bill on departure. Not only do business travellers avoid the hassle of paying the bill themselves. They also escape having to claim back the money through expenses.

With billback, the hotel bill is paid for by Click Travel. We then invoice the traveller's organisation for the same amount. 

Your organisation can set up billback to pay for the hotel room only. Or you can set up billback to cover other charges including breakfast, wi-fi, parking and meals. You can also specify an upper limit to the meal supplement allowance.

How we set up billback

In the travel industry, air tickets, UK rail tickets, and car hire use global payment systems. These systems make paying for such products automatic and faultless. Unfortunately, a similar global payment system is non-existent in the hotel industry.

To get round this, we set up the billback arrangement with the hotel in advance of the traveller's arrival. We do this by emailing the payment instruction for the billback payment to the hotel. We refer to this payment instruction as the billback instruction.

IMPORTANT

When payment for a hotel booking goes through
billback, please make sure the traveller is familiar
with the billback process. The traveller should  
take the billback instruction with them
to the hotel.

V-cards

For each billback hotel booking, we create a virtual credit card (v-card) with a unique card number. When you confirm the hotel booking, we pass the v-card to the hotel for billback.  At check out, the hotel charges your account to Click's credit account via the v-card.

The v-card shows on the  billback instruction that we attach to the confirmation email.

We choose to use v-cards as they provide us with security to ensure that fraud is not committed. V-cards also help us to send out accurate invoices to your organisation for hotel stays. The v-card enables us to:

  • Maintain automatic links with the charges that come through with your booking.

  • Limit your exposure to fraud by imposing a credit limit on the card.

  • Impose other restrictions e.g. limit the card for use only by merchants classed as hotels.

Limitations

Some hotels do not accept billback. Other hotels only accept billback on specific elements of the bill (e.g. room only, but not meals).

Billback can be more difficult to arrange for international stays. Find out more about International billback restrictions.

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