Knowledgebase
Online Bookings | CVV2 or Card ID Number in a GDS or travel website booking
Posted by Jeff Tweddale on 15 Dec 2008 10:57 PM

Forcing a customer to provide the CVV2 for online bookings at YOUR website is feasible, as BookingCenter can act as your storefront and process the CVV2 in real-time according to the rules of the card issuing banks.

However, forcing travel agents to place a CVV2 (card ID) into a GDS or third party website booking is unlikely to happen, as the credit card industry stipulates that CVV2 is only to be used 'one time' for a single transaction, and can not be sent through interfaces or stored anywhere.

When we promote a property on the GDS or OTA systems, we specify that a CVV2 is required for a deposit, and some travel agents do, in fact, send it on with their booking. However, this practice is getting less and less common, as PCI compliance from the credit card industry is getting tighter and tighter.

There is no way around the inherent issue that CVV2 numbers can only be used between card holder and service provider. Reservation services (such as travel websites or travel agents) are not going to be able to send along the CVV2 number, even if your merchant bank states that it is required for processing a card.

Discuss this with your merchant bank, as we have found they can, in fact, work with hospitality providers to enable non CVV2 transactions for advanced deposits.

The setting to 'require CVV2' for your BookingCenter Booking Engine is found for Desktop users in Parameters | System Config and for MyPMS and Management Tool users in the "Site Settings" there needs to be a "Yes" next to "Use CVV2 Authorization".