Virtual credit cards are widely used by online travel agencies such as Expedia, Booking.com, and Agoda. If these payments are not processed correctly, hotels may unknowingly leave revenue uncollected.
Online travel agencies often pay hotels using virtual credit cards instead of direct bank transfers. These cards are generated for individual reservations and usually include specific activation dates, expiration limits, and transaction restrictions.
Virtual card payments may remain unprocessed if they are attempted before the card activation date, after the expiration date, or if the transaction is overlooked during high reservation volume periods.
These discrepancies are typically identified during financial reconciliation when OTA reservation reports do not match PMS folio balances or when expected payments are missing from settlement reports.
Hotels processing a large number of OTA reservations may occasionally encounter missed or unsuccessful virtual card transactions. Even a small number of unprocessed payments can result in noticeable revenue discrepancies.
Reconciliation requires comparing OTA reservation records, PMS folio data, and payment transaction history to confirm that each virtual card associated with a reservation has been successfully processed.
Hotel Audit Wizard manually reviews OTA reservations, PMS records, and payment activity to identify virtual card transactions that may have failed, expired, or remained unprocessed.