Allianz Trade extends credit insurance to Mastercard VCN issuers in the travel sector

This addresses a long-standing cash flow issue in B2B travel.

Allianz Trade has partnered with Mastercard to extend trade credit insurance to issuers using Mastercard Virtual Card Numbers (VCNs) in the travel industry, aiming to help them offer credit terms to online travel agencies (OTAs) with less exposure to non-payment risk.

The move, delivered through Allianz Trade's enhanced Allianz Trade pay solution, addresses a long-standing cash flow issue in B2B travel. VCN issuers have typically required OTAs to pay upfront, even though OTAs are often reimbursed by their own clients later. That mismatch has squeezed OTA cash flow and limited issuers' ability to scale.

Under the new arrangement, Allianz Trade will insure issuers against OTA non-payment, managing collections and indemnifying issuers where necessary.

The offering runs on payment data intelligence infrastructure from actuary.aero, which converts transaction-level card data into real-time risk signals, allowing underwriting decisions to be made within the payment flow itself rather than after the fact.

Mastercard has offered VCN payments to the travel sector through its Wholesale Program for more than a decade. The partnership is intended to help issuers support B2B travel payment flows that were previously constrained, allowing them to participate in the sector more securely.

Allianz Trade said its data network covers 289 million corporates globally, and that the new solution extends its risk underwriting directly to Mastercard VCN issuers at the transaction level, helping secure the wider B2B travel value chain.