Challenge

To help adventure-seekers discover amazing experiences, Travello provides a global online marketplace that connects independent travelers with tours and activities in Australia, New Zealand, and other locations worldwide.

By 2024, after years of working with the same payment provider, the Brisbane-based travel provider felt that its old payments experience was stopping customers in their tracks instead of getting them on the trail. The provider’s service was highly unreliable, with outages that would often last 24 hours or more without warning, costing Travello significant lost revenue and customer trust.

“When their platform went down, there was no one for us to call. I was literally messaging people on LinkedIn just to try to find someone who would tell me what was going on over there,” said Ryan Hanly, cofounder and CEO of Travello.

Travello needed to quickly find a new payment partner that would be reliable and responsive before the next outage could strike, making the need for a rapid implementation key. At the same time, the company saw switching providers as an opportunity. A more modern provider could help Travello improve its checkout experience by offering capabilities such as checkout in local currencies and new payment methods such as buy now, pay later (BNPL) or one-click checkout.

A new provider could also help Travello reduce its fraud rates without creating an extra burden for its small team. The company frequently dealt with fraudulent actors using stolen credit cards to book tours and resell them, leading to a high chargeback rate. Travello needed a way to stop fraud while maintaining the flexibility to adjust its fraud rules as needed to reduce friction for legitimate customers.

Solution

Travello chose Stripe Payments for its ability to offer a modern checkout experience, leading reliability, and fraud prevention capabilities. Working with Everest Engineering as its Stripe implementation partner, Travello was able to migrate to Payments on a fast schedule—without disrupting its small engineering team.

Travello and Everest also used Stripe’s Accelerate program, a dedicated implementation service from Stripe experts for proactive guidance and real-time troubleshooting about issues such as specific local payment method integrations and customization of fraud rules.

With Stripe’s 99.999% uptime, Travello gained new confidence that it could offer its customers a stable, uninterrupted checkout experience. Once the company began working with Stripe, it also realized it had found the responsive payments partner it had been missing.

“We were looking for a payment provider that was forward-thinking in terms of their product. Once we began speaking to the team, we realized we had also found a face in our payment provider that we could reach out to for problem solving,” said Hanly.

To create a fast, flexible, and secure checkout, Travello used Stripe’s Optimized Checkout Suite, which includes a set of embeddable UI components and access to more than 100 payment methods. Travello used the Payment Element to quickly replace its legacy checkout experience and gain turnkey access to a variety of payment methods, including credit cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Afterpay, and PayPal—which is a major payment method for Travello. The company also expanded its payment options by adding Klarna and Alipay. To reduce checkout friction, Travello also added Link, a digital wallet built by Stripe that autofills payment data for faster checkout.

The Optimized Checkout Suite uses powerful AI models to personalize and dynamically display the most relevant payment methods for each customer based on their location and other factors. In addition, Travello gained access to Adaptive Pricing, which displays the price in the customer’s local currency.

To fight fraud without introducing unnecessary friction, Travello worked with Everest and Stripe’s Accelerate program to implement Stripe Radar for Fraud Teams. With this solution, Travello can now use AI that’s trained on millions of transactions around the globe to detect and block its unique fraud risks. Travello also used custom rules to either target specific fraud vectors or quickly allow transactions that might otherwise be flagged. After implementation was complete, Stripe’s team hosted a series of one-on-one workshops to help Travello fine-tune its fraud rules and apply best practices.

Results

Travello completed Stripe migration in just nine weeks

Working with Everest Engineering and Stripe’s Accelerate program, Travello completed its full migration in nine weeks, in time for its peak travel season. The implementation was deeply collaborative across Everest Engineering, Stripe, and Travello—giving Travello the level of partnership and communication that was lacking from the previous provider.

Post-implementation, Travello continues to receive hands-on support from Stripe as it refines its payments experience.
“It was a big project, and it went about as seamlessly as it could have,” said Hanly. “Since implementation, we’ve been in constant contact with the team. A big factor in getting across the line has been the level of support from Stripe.”

Conversion rates increased by 10%–12%

Since implementing Stripe, Travello has seen its overall conversion rate increase by 10%–12%. Travello attributes this to Stripe’s stable, uninterrupted payments infrastructure with 99.999% uptime. The company has not experienced a single outage, restoring the team’s confidence that it will be able to process payments whenever customers are ready to book.

Cart size increased by 4% with new BNPL options

By adding Klarna, Travello gave customers more flexibility in the way they pay, particularly for high-priced tours that might be too costly for some travelers to pay for up front. Offering BNPL reduced friction for these customers, which delivered an immediate boost in average cart size from $510 AUD to $530 AUD.

“People are definitely utilizing our new buy now, pay later options, so that’s been a positive addition as well,” said Hanly. “We definitely see increased usage of BNPL for higher priced cart sizes. This demonstrates that customers want the flexibility to pay as and when they want, but also ensure they have their tour locked in.”

Link now drives more than 20% of total payment volume

Since launching Link, Travello has seen one-click checkout become its third most popular payment method, accounting for more than 20% of payment volume.

“With 73% of our checkouts taking place on mobile, Link is a great option for those customers,” said Hanly.

Travello reduced fraudulent transactions by 16%

By using Radar for Fraud Team’s customized rules, Travello has been able to reduce fraudulent transactions by 16%, while allowing more legitimate transactions to go through. For example, when members of the UK cricket team supporter group Barmy Army rapidly began making multiple bookings ahead of a major tournament, it was flagged as fraud. Travello identified in real time that these transactions were legitimate, and then created a custom rule for UK customers to ensure those payments moved through freely.

“It allows us to flag it, review it, and then push it through manually if we feel that it is a legitimate payment,” said Hanly.

About Partner

Everest Engineering is a software and product development consultancy that specializes in helping organizations, of all shapes and sizes, rapidly scale their digital product and their digital product teams.

Everest Engineering has over 200 engineers, designers, and product experts across Australia, India, and Malaysia on its team. This team provides extra capability, capacity, technical leadership, and strategic guidance to the likes of Canva, SEEK, Kmart, and Xero.

Everest is recognized as one of Stripe’s few Payments Specialization partners and is a leading integration partner in Australia.