Travel businesses might take a global view when it comes to customers, suppliers and revenue, but the payment pain facing OTAs is surprisingly regional.

In a recent Modulr study of payment trends, across the UK, France, Spain and Italy just 4% of 500 respondents said they were satisfied with their current processes. Around 70% said payments could be “much more efficient,” while a further 26% saw room for improvement.

But not all pain is felt equally. While these aggregate figures paint a picture of industry-wide friction, a closer look by geography shows that the shape and intensity of these challenges vary sharply by region.

In fact, while the international headline is clear — inefficiency, fraud risk, and fragmentation are harming travel businesses — the regional segmentation reveals where the pressure points really are for travel businesses.

That matters, because OTAs today rarely operate in one country alone. Their headquarters may be in Paris or London, but their revenue may come from across Western Europe, the Middle East or APAC. As bookings stretch across borders, so too do the payment frictions that come with reconciling supplier relationships, refund cycles and local settlement rails.

Key payment challenges by country

Southern Europe feels the weight of inefficiency

Travel companies headquartered in France and Spain reported some of the highest levels of dissatisfaction with their current payment processes. Over 80% of French respondents said their systems could be “much more efficient,” a figure well above the average. In Spain, while slightly fewer gave such a stark response, 100% still agreed that improvement is needed.

Manual reconciliation and supplier payouts remain heavy burdens in these regions, where large partner networks and fragmented systems are common. These businesses also show lower budget commitment to transformation, often citing complexity or cost as a barrier.

Internationally, the most commonly cited impacts of inefficient payments were customer loss, fraud risk, market access constraints and avoidable fees. In Spain, however, respondents were far more likely to highlight missed opportunities and unnecessary costs — pointing to the specific pressure felt in highly competitive tourism markets.

Yet this tension points to a clear opportunity: the businesses most weighed down by inefficiency may be the most motivated to change, if the path is clear and cost-effective.

Italy: high fraud anxiety, high urgency for change

Italy stands out for both its appetite for change and the nature of its pain. Nearly 90% of respondents said their payment systems could be “much more efficient,” and almost as many reported rising fraud exposure in the last three years.

In particular, Italian travel companies flagged risks like account redirection, impersonation, and difficulty verifying supplier details — all common markers of B2B payment fraud. While fraud risk was cited internationally by 28% of respondents, the figure was markedly higher in Italy.

Unlike some of their European counterparts, these Italian firms are allocating budget to do something about it. More than half have committed at least 1% of their annual budget to payment improvement.

The implication is clear: for firms managing complex, multi-party supply chains, real-time verification tools and programmable payment controls aren't nice-to-haves: they're essential infrastructure.

The UK: more advanced, still under pressure

UK-based travel firms tend to show higher levels of automation maturity. Many already leverage Faster Payments and SEPA Instant for outbound settlement, and a higher proportion rated their systems as needing only “somewhat” more efficiency.

But they're far from immune to pain. UK respondents reported the highest concern about fraud risk across all regions, with 36% citing it as a top issue — above the international average of 28%. And for the UK’s large OTA segment, refund and cancellation cycles continue to create cashflow volatility and operational overhead.

Cancellation risk was a concern shared internationally, with nearly 90% of respondents worried about the cashflow impact of no-fee cancellations. This was most acute in the UK and France, where businesses often handle high refund volumes at speed.

In this market, the opportunity isn't simply to introduce automation, but to evolve it: refining refund processes, tightening fraud controls, and embedding intelligence into every outbound flow.

Operational footprint reveals the real friction

Perhaps the most important finding is that a business's location doesn't fully explain its payment challenges. What matters more is its operational footprint.

Businesses operating in Africa or the Middle East reported the highest levels of payment fragmentation – regularly working across 7-10 different methods. A broad reach among the organisations surveyed revealed the incredible scope of today’s travel industry – with suppliers even in Antarctica among those identified by respondents.

Fraud was noted as a concern here – not because of a high incidence, but potentially because of a lack of maturity in that niche market and the need to work with non-travel organisations such as charities, foundations or other third party facilitators that simply aren’t designed in the same way as the rest of the travel industry.

There is no surprise, then, to see a strong correlation between geographic and payment complexity with operational burdens and payment pain.

Companies generating revenue across three or more regions — for example, a French OTA serving Western Europe, MENA and APAC — reported significantly higher pain across almost every payment metric. These companies face more fragmented supplier terms, greater currency risk, and deeper reconciliation challenges and see an increased need of virtual card orchestration to manage their complex supplier networks.

Even if headquartered in a relatively mature market like the UK, firms with a multi-region customer base see more refund exposure, more complex compliance requirements and a greater need for orchestration, and the more value these businesses place on a centralised, multi-rail payment system.

Internationally, firms operating across APAC and the Middle East flagged more pain from currency conversion, payment method fragmentation, and regulatory differences than their Europe-only peers.

For these businesses, standard payment processing isn't enough. They need infrastructure that flexes to local realities without multiplying operational effort.

What this means for future-fit payment operations

The travel sector's payment challenges aren't new. But this data shows they are deeply localised. What's seen as “broken” in one market may be tolerable in another. And as travel businesses scale globally, these differences accumulate into real cost.

The good news? The challenges are solvable. By tailoring automation, security and payment orchestration to geographic context, travel companies can not only remove friction — they can turn payments into a competitive edge.

Here’s how those adaptations break down by each national market:

• UK-based OTAs need more robust fraud prevention and refund automation.
• Italian travel firms benefit from embedded controls and real-time verification.
• French and Spanish companies respond well to simplicity, automation and cost efficiency.
• Multi-market operators need centralised APIs that abstract complexity across regions.

Payments may be global, but the problems are local.

At Modulr, we build the infrastructure that bridges payment gaps — helping travel businesses reduce cost, mitigate risk and scale across borders, all from one API platform.

Speak to one of our team to find out more.