The neutral party that holds the money until the ticket is real.
Your customer wires payment to OnwardTrust instead of to you. We hold it, you issue the ticket, we check it, and the money is released. If no valid ticket appears, the traveller gets it back — which is precisely why they were willing to pay an agency they had never heard of.
The sale you lose is the one you never hear about
A traveller finds a fare with you that is €80 cheaper than anywhere else. Then they are asked to wire money — no chargeback, no card protection, no recourse — to a company name they have never seen, for a ticket that does not exist yet.
Most of them close the tab. They do not email you, so you never learn the fare was fine and the counterparty risk was the problem. The bigger and less familiar your market, the more of this you are absorbing silently.
Escrow removes the thing they were actually afraid of. The traveller is no longer trusting you — they are trusting that money sitting with a third party cannot be taken until a ticket exists.
Why bank transfer, specifically
Escrow only has a real story where the payment rail has none. A wire has no chargeback — once it lands, it is gone — which is exactly why travellers hesitate and exactly why a neutral holder is worth something.
Version 1 is bank transfer only. That is what the agencies in the pilot asked for, and it is where the protection gap actually is.
Four steps, and a rule about each one
The whole product is the middle beat: the money exists, and you cannot reach it yet.
The traveller pays us
You send them to OnwardTrust with the amount and a unique reference. They see our name, our IBAN and a page that is visibly not yours.
We hold it
We match the credit to the booking and tell you the money is here. You can issue with confidence. You cannot withdraw it.
You issue the ticket
You submit proof of issuance. We check it against the airline record before anything moves — that check is the thing the traveller is paying for.
We release, or refund
Valid ticket, dispute window closed, funds released to you. No valid ticket, and the traveller is refunded by default.
The page never wears your colours
A checkout that looks like the agency's own site is not a credible third party. So the portal is deliberately, visibly ours — and your agency is named in an attributed panel on every screen, so the traveller always knows whose booking this is.
Brass means held. One accent colour with one meaning: money that is in escrow right now. Released money turns green, returned money turns red. A traveller can read their status by colour before they read a word of it.
The wait is designed too. Manual matching means hours can pass between a customer sending money and anyone confirming it — an unexplained gap at the payment step is where trust products die, so there is a screen whose only job is making that interval legible.
What it changes on your side
You sell to strangers
The traveller's decision stops being "do I trust this company" and becomes "do I trust that money held by someone else cannot be taken". That is a much easier question, and it is the one escrow answers.
The fee never reaches your customer
You pay it, deducted at payout. It is never a line item at checkout — a price that changes on the last screen reopens a decision the customer had already closed, and costs far more than the fee is worth.
One integration, not a rebuild
You redirect to us with the booking and the amount, and receive a webhook when the money is held and again when it is released. Our own travel brands go first, through the same public API you will use.
Written down, before you ask
These are decisions, not aspirations. Where version 1 is manual, it says manual.
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Who holds the money | We do, on OnwardTrust-controlled accounts. |
| Payment methods | Bank transfer only in version 1. EUR only. |
| What releases the funds | Proof of issuance, checked by our staff, after the dispute window closes. |
| What happens with no valid ticket | The traveller is refunded. Refund is the default, not the escalation. |
| Who pays the fee | The agency, deducted at payout. Never shown to the traveller. |
| How fast is matching | Manual, during business hours. There is no bank API in version 1 and we do not pretend otherwise. |
Funds are held on accounts OnwardTrust Sarl controls, not in a segregated legal trust — so we do not describe ourselves as a trustee and do not use the term client money. What is true is what is written above: we hold it, the agency cannot take it, and the traveller gets it back if no ticket appears.
Someone asked you to send money to OnwardTrust
That is the normal way this works, and there is a page that explains exactly who we are, what happens to your money, and how to get it back.
Read the traveller's pageThe ones agencies actually ask
How long until I get paid?
After you submit proof of issuance and it checks out, funds are released once the dispute window closes. We will not release before it does — releasing early with refund-by-default would mean funding refunds out of our own pocket, and an escrow that can be talked into early release is not escrow.
What counts as proof of issuance?
A ticket number we can verify against the airline record — not a booking confirmation, not a PNR on its own, not a screenshot. The written standard is agreed with each agency before the first booking, so there is nothing to argue about later.
What if the customer sends the wrong amount, or forgets the reference?
Both happen constantly, and both are handled by a human rather than a rule. Short payments are flagged for review; a credit with no reference goes into an unmatched queue and we work backwards from the amount and sender. We would rather find the booking than bounce the money.
Can I pass the fee on to my customer?
Not at checkout. Price it into your fare if you want to recover it. A fee added at the payment step damages conversion for everyone on the platform, so it is a contract term rather than a preference.
Do you take cards?
Not in version 1. Card acceptance waits for a licensed provider — a portal holding other agencies' money has no business being in PCI scope on code it wrote itself. Bank transfer is also where escrow is worth the most, because there is no chargeback to fall back on.
Who are you, exactly?
OnwardTrust is built by an operator of online travel brands, which is how we know what this problem costs. Those brands are merchant number one on the platform — a pilot, not the use case — and they integrate through the same public API every partner uses, so the partner path is designed deliberately rather than inherited by accident.
We are onboarding a small group of agencies
Onboarding includes know-your-customer and sanctions screening, an agreed proof-of-issuance standard, and a test booking end to end before any real traveller sees it. If you sell flights on bank transfer, tell us your volume and your markets.