Core values of global scale and local relevance evident in this solution
The challenge
The Booking.com platform has a truly global footprint, which creates a number of unique challenges, particularly in doing business in emerging markets in Asia Pacific, Africa and South America. Booking.com also has local support entities, with offices in 70 countries which are required to pay local staff salaries and local operating expenses in countries where physical operations occur.
Daily challenges for Booking.com include dealing with global and trapped currencies, limited or undeveloped banking infrastructure, general infrastructure challenges, ever-evolving regulatory situations, a rapidly growing customer base, and emerging technologies related to payments and collection solutions and cash concentration systems.
Booking.com’s geographical presence across Asia Pacific meant the company had to investigate the right partner banks which could support its cash management model for liquidity management, collections and payments. It also wanted to leverage the right technology that existed within these markets to streamline operations.
The solution
The chosen solution, provided by ANZ, included the following:
- Local non-resident accounts that hotels could pay into without a high cost factor.
- SWIFT Score reporting and payment technologies using FIN and FileAct across countries such as Australia, NZ, as well as Asian territories including the Greater Mekong region and Pacific Islands that are early-stage emerging economies.
- Access to an electronic banking system that supported the operational requirements of the business within the operating hubs;
- Exploring non-standard payment infrastructure options and implementing where possible.
- Using virtual accounts in the Greater Mekong region to improve the efficiencies of straight-through reconciliation.
- Process optimisation through key reference allocations for collections received in various markets.
- Cross-border cash concentration structures for commissions to be repatriated back to the global pooling bank.
Yankit Gupta, Senior Banking Specialist, Treasury explains, “A combination of cash management fundamentals, payments and collections process engineering, and leveraging various technologies enables us to deliver an efficient treasury ecosystem which provides enterprise benefits for both our customers and the company.”
Best practice and innovation
In APAC, the business operates in complicated markets such as Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Samoa and Vanuatu, while also operating in more established markets such as Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand along with highly regulated key markets such as Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, India and Sri Lanka. Across all of these markets they have been able to deploy a best practice approach where they use SWIFT Score technology for reporting and payments, electronic banking systems as support to the file exchange capability, common global implementation standards, global card acquirer services, automated cross-border cash concentration structures in line with local market regulations, straight through reconciliation, and an efficient bank relationship management and service model.
