Paying vendors directly for trips booked on Perk

Paying the vendor directly is a new way for North American customers to pay for trips booked on Perk.

Instead of charging your credit card, your payment details will be securely passed to the airline, hotel, or rental car company, and they'll charge you directly.

Differences between paying the vendor directly and other payment methods

	Paying the vendor directly	Other Perk payments You pay Perk, we pay vendors
Payments	You will be charged directly by the airline, hotel, or rental car company. Their names will show up on your credit card statement. Both pre-pay and pay on arrival payments are allowed. Only available for credit card payments.	Perk charges you and arranges the payment in advance. Typically, just pre-pay payments are allowed.
Invoices	Perk issues invoices for any fees charged by us. The airline, hotel or car rental company provides the final invoice. Travelers must collect their own invoices. For pre-pay transactions, all flights, and pre-pay hotels/cars, Perk will issue a Transaction Summary, which can be used for expense purposes. Transaction Summaries are not invoices. You’ll need to check with the vendor for the final invoice. Trips where you pay the vendor directly still appear in your Perk reporting. To find them, you’ll need to filter by payment recipient and select Perk or Vendor. You'll need to use your expense partner to reconcile invoices.	Perk provides trip invoices, which are available for account admins and analysts.
Loyalty programs	You'll receive benefit from credit card points multipliers as you are paying with your credit card. Earn loyalty points directly with airlines, hotels, or rental car companies.	Loyalty points might not be available for all trips.
Expense management	Transactions appear with the airline, hotel or rental car company's name. Perk has selected expense partners where our expense integrations still work for pre-pay transactions. For full details, check with your account manager.	Transactions appear as Perk. If you have an expense integration enabled, all trips will be linked.
Service type	Eligible for selected flights, stays and rental cars. All our inventory for these services is available. There are some cases where you will default back to paying Perk directly to ensure competitive prices.	Available for all flights, stays, trains, rental cars, and services booked through the Concierge. All inventory is available and you always pay Perk directly.

Enable paying the vendor directly

You can only opt in at the company level, and all eligible trips, when the inventory allows, will be booked by paying the vendor directly.

Many accounts have paying the vendor directly set up as the default. If you aren’t sure if this payment method is enabled or if you want more information, reach out to your account manager.

Once you've opted in, you can enable these payments for rental cars following the instructions on Change your car payment preferences.

Book a paying the vendor directly trip

Book your trip as usual on Perk.
Your trip will be reserved and your credit card details will be sent to the airline, hotel, or rental car company.
Complete the payment when you arrive. Sometimes your card will be charged before you arrive.

When you are searching for flights, you can use the Payment options filter to see only options where you pay the airline directly.

You'll see the Pay directly tag on the relevant fares.

Important booking information

Even if your account has paying the vendor directly enabled, there will be instances where Perk steps in and you pay us to secure the service for particular routes. In these cases, the booking, receipt, and invoice processes will remain the same as they were before.

For hotel bookings, you'll still need a credit card in your name for the security deposit and any incidentals. Some hotels require you to have the same card that was used to make the booking.

Prices may vary slightly from those displayed on the Perk platform due to currency conversion and other fees.
Changes made directly with the airline, hotel, or rental car company may not be reflected in Perk reports.
Perk will still charge you any applicable fees.
Prices will remain the same regardless of the payment method used for your booking.

Cancellations and Refunds

You'll still need to cancel your trip through Perk, and we'll take care of the cancellation and request a refund.
Refunds will be processed directly to your card, and Perk won't have any visibility over this.
At the moment, FlexiTravel can't be added to bookings where you pay the vendor directly.

Security

Perk securely stores and passes credit card details using a vault and proxy service, similar to how other payments are handled.

We also utilize two-factor authentication as an additional security measure. For more information, see Understanding two-factor authentication.