India's Largest Travel Network Via.com Works with CyberSource to Enhance Payment Authentication Process

BANGALORE, India, April 16, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- CyberSource, a Visa Inc. company (NYSE: V), and one of the world's largest providers of eCommerce payment management services, today announced a collaboration with Via.com, formerly known as Flight Raja Travels, India's largest travel network. CyberSource will help Via.com extend its global customer reach while providing safe and secure payment services.

Via.com, a well-known brand name in the travel industry, currently serves more than 40 million customers worldwide and has more than 40,000 travel partners in Brazil, India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Singapore. Through this collaboration, Via.com will leverage CyberSource Decision Manager to enhance its payment authentication process for card payments, enabling Via.com's customers to have a better payment experience, thereby building customer loyalty.

Online travel agencies are growing in importance and are experiencing fast growth globally, especially those from emerging markets such as China and India. It was also found that over the past five years, online travel agency (OTA) websites were responsible for one-third, or US$21.3 billion, of all online hotel bookings[1]. This is a reflection of the importance of OTAs in the travel distribution and reservation chain. With increasing pressure on margins, companies that implement streamlined fraud management practices can enable a higher number of successful transactions and thus improve their customers' payment experience.

"Via has more than 40,000 partners across this region and we recently launched our business in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam. As we continue to scale up our business in diverse geographic locations, enhancing the payment authentication process for our merchants and customers becomes a priority due to our multi-jurisdictional presence. We are excited to embark on this collaboration with CyberSource, due to its international and market leading presence in providing fraud management," said V. Swaminathan, Chief Executive Officer, Via.com.

Via.com views online fraud management as one of its top business priorities. With CyberSource Decision Manager, Via.com will be able to pinpoint fraud faster, more accurately and with less manual intervention. This is achieved by screening inbound orders against data and correlations from more than 60 billion transactions processed by Visa and CyberSource annually. The transaction data is supplemented by 260 validation and correlation tests, which enable the solution to effectively expand the depth and breadth of fraud-pattern visibility.

"CyberSource recognizes fraud management as one of the key requisites for successful travel agents worldwide. We are delighted to work with Via.com to help it achieve its business targets. By implementing Decision Manager, we hope to help Via.com significantly reduce chargeback disputes arising out of suspicious transactions, ultimately improving the transaction experience for both its agents and customers," said Michael Bradley, Managing Director, Asia Pacific, CyberSource.

[1] Hotel News Resource, Online Travel Agencies (OTA): Friend or Foe?, December 10, 2013

About CyberSource

CyberSource, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Visa Inc., is a payment management company. Over 400,000 businesses worldwide use CyberSource and Authorize.Net brand solutions to process online payments, streamline fraud management, and simplify payment security. The company is headquartered in Foster City, California and maintains offices throughout the world, with regional headquarters in Singapore, Tokyo, Miami / Sao Paulo and Reading, U.K. CyberSource operates in Europe under agreement with Visa Europe. For more information, please visit http://www.cybersource.com/asiapacific.

About Via.com

Via is the largest travel network, with presence in over 1,200 cities in India and globally. Over the last six years, Via has silently revolutionized the travel domain globally and brought in value-added changes that benefit the customer and the business channels. Via has an annual turnover of US$500 million. Via's business partners and its network are the heart of its business. Via is committed to consistently innovate, improve and deliver the highest possible standard of business partnership so as to provide a profitable return on investment and growth in market share.