Terms and Conditions

Who we are

The service described here is operated by OnwardTrust S.a.r.l., a private limited liability company registered in Luxembourg, with its registered office at Rue du puits Romain 33-39, 8070 Bertrange, Luxembourg. Our VAT number and other identifying details are on our legal notice.

We are an escrow service for travel. A travel agency directs its customer to pay us rather than paying the agency directly. We receive the payment, hold it, and release it to the agency only once we have verified that a valid ticket has been issued for the booking. If no valid ticket appears, we return the money to the traveller.

By sending a payment to us, or by directing a customer to pay us, you accept these terms.

Definitions

Agency

The travel business that sold the booking and that has an agreement with us to use the service. Also called the merchant.

Traveller

The person who pays for the booking. The traveller does not need an account with us and is not asked to register.

Payment

A single booking's worth of money, identified by a reference, moving through the states described in these terms.

Reference

The unique code issued for each payment, in the form OT-XXXX-XXXX. It is the only thing that links an incoming bank transfer to a booking.

Hold

The period during which we have the money and neither the agency nor the traveller can move it.

Proof of issuance

Evidence, submitted by the agency, that a ticket exists for the booking as sold. What counts as proof is agreed in writing with each agency before its first booking.

Dispute window

The period after proof is verified during which the traveller can raise a problem, and before which we will not release funds.

How the money is held

This section states the position precisely, because it is the part most often overstated by services of this kind.

Money paid to us is held on bank accounts opened and controlled by OnwardTrust S.a.r.l. and used for escrow payments. It is not held in a segregated legal trust, and we do not act as a trustee. We are not a bank, we do not take deposits, and we are not a licensed payment institution or an electronic money institution.

What is true is what this document describes: we receive the money, the agency cannot obtain it until the conditions in section 5 are met, and the traveller receives it back when the conditions in section 6 apply. Those are contractual obligations we owe you under these terms.

No interest is paid on money held in escrow, and no interest accrues to the traveller or to the agency for the period of the hold.

We do not lend, invest or otherwise use money held in escrow for our own account.

Paying into escrow

Method and currency

We accept payment by bank transfer, in euro. We do not accept cards, cash, cryptocurrency or any other method. A payment sent in another currency, or by a method we do not accept, may be returned to its sender, and any conversion or intermediary costs of doing so fall to the sender.

The reference is mandatory

Every payment must carry its reference in the transfer's reference or payment-purpose field, exactly as shown on the payment page. A transfer that arrives without a usable reference cannot be matched to a booking automatically. We will attempt to identify it from the amount, the sending account and the date, but we cannot guarantee that we will do so before the hold on the booking expires.

Amount

The amount shown on the payment page is the amount to send. Where the amount we receive differs from the amount due, we do not decide the outcome by rule: the difference is reviewed and the agency and the traveller are contacted. A short payment is commonly the result of intermediary bank charges, and we would rather resolve it than reject the transfer.

Deadline

Each payment page shows a deadline. If cleared funds do not reach us by then, the hold expires and the booking may no longer be available at the price quoted. Money that arrives after a hold has expired is returned to the sender rather than held against a booking that no longer exists.

Bank details

The account details for a payment are shown only on the payment page at onwardtrust.com. See section 9.

When funds are released

We release funds to the agency only when all of the following are true:

• the agency has submitted proof of issuance for the booking, and a member of our staff has verified it — a submitted proof is not a verified proof, and an unverified claim is never treated as a ticket;
• the proof matches the booking as sold, including the passenger, the route and the dates — a ticket that exists but does not match what was bought is treated as no valid ticket;
• the dispute window has closed; and
• where the amount is above the threshold we apply, a second member of our staff has independently approved the release.

Every approval is recorded with the time it was made and the identity of the person who made it. That record is available to both the agency and the traveller in the event of a dispute.

Funds are released to the bank account the agency has given us and which we have verified as belonging to it, less our fee. We do not release funds to a third party, and we do not change an agency's payout account on the strength of an email.

When funds are returned

A return is the default outcome whenever the conditions for release are not met. The traveller does not have to argue for it and the agency does not have to agree to it. In particular, we return the money where:

• no proof of issuance is submitted and verified within the agreed period;
• the ticket that was issued does not match the booking as sold;
• the hold expired before cleared funds reached us, or the booking is otherwise no longer available; or
• a dispute raised within the dispute window is upheld.

We return money to the account it came from. We do not return it to a different account, in a different currency, or to a person other than the one who sent it. If the originating account has been closed, we will ask the sender for evidence of ownership of a replacement account before we pay out.

A return covers the full amount we received. Our fee is charged to the agency and is never deducted from money returned to a traveller.

A return does not by itself cancel the booking or settle anything between the traveller and the agency. Where a ticket was correctly issued, the agency's own cancellation terms apply to the booking, and those terms are between the traveller and the agency.

Fees

Our fee is paid by the agency and is deducted at payout. It is agreed with each agency in writing before its first booking.

The traveller is never charged a fee by us, and our fee is not permitted to appear as a line item in an agency's checkout. An agency that wishes to recover the cost must price it into its fare. This is a term of our agreement with the agency, not a preference.

We do not charge the traveller for a return, and we do not deduct a fee from returned money.

The agency's obligations

Before an agency can use the service, it must complete our onboarding, which includes know-your-customer and sanctions screening on the business and the people who control it, a written proof-of-issuance standard, and a test booking end to end.

An agency using the service must:

• send travellers to the payment page we provide, and not reproduce our bank details in its own checkout, emails or documents — showing our account details on a surface we do not control is precisely the pattern travellers are warned about in section 9;
• create a payment only for a genuine booking, at the amount actually payable by the traveller;
• submit proof of issuance promptly, and only for tickets that have genuinely been issued;
• keep its payout account details, its contact details and its ownership information current; and
• deal with the traveller honestly about the status of the booking.

We may suspend or terminate an agency's access, and withhold a release pending investigation, where we have reasonable grounds to suspect fraud, misrepresentation of a ticket, sanctions exposure or a breach of these terms. Where we do so, money already held for a traveller is returned to that traveller.

Fraud and impersonation

This service exists to tell strangers where to send money, which makes it a target for impersonation. The following are commitments, not advice:

• We will never contact you to say our bank details have changed. Any message that does — by email, letter, telephone, SMS or messaging app, however convincing, and whatever address it appears to come from — is not from us.
• We will never ask you for a card number, a password, a one-time code or remote access to your device.
• We will never ask you to send a further payment to "release", "verify" or "unlock" money you have already sent.

Take the account details only from a payment page whose address begins https://onwardtrust.com/. If anything you have been told does not match that page, stop and contact us at help@onwardtrust.com before sending anything.

We are not able to recover money sent to an account that is not ours, so please check before you send rather than afterwards.

Our liability

We are responsible for holding the money we receive and for applying the release and return rules in sections 5 and 6. Where we fail to do that, we are liable for the resulting loss.

We are not the seller of the travel. We do not operate flights, we do not issue tickets, and we are not a party to the contract between the traveller and the agency. We are therefore not liable for the performance of that contract — for a cancelled or delayed flight, for a schedule change, for an airline's insolvency, or for the quality of what the agency sold.

We are not liable for delays caused by the banking system, including the time a transfer takes to arrive, an intermediary bank's charges, or a payment held by a bank for its own checks.

Nothing in these terms limits our liability for fraud, for gross negligence or wilful misconduct, or for anything that cannot lawfully be limited. Nothing in these terms affects the statutory rights of a traveller acting as a consumer.

Data protection

We process personal data as a controller for the purposes described in our Privacy Policy, which forms part of these terms. It sets out what we hold, why, how long for, and the rights you have over it.

Complaints

Write to help@onwardtrust.com if you are a traveller, or to partners@onwardtrust.com if you are an agency. Tell us the payment reference and what has gone wrong.

We acknowledge complaints within one working day and aim to give a substantive answer within ten. If we cannot resolve a complaint to your satisfaction, that does not affect your right to bring the matter before the courts identified in section 14.

Changes to these terms

A payment is governed by the version of these terms in force on the day it was created, and we do not apply a later version to money already held. The date at the top of this page is the date of the version you are reading.

We will give agencies at least thirty days' notice of a change that affects them.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the law of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. The courts of Luxembourg City have jurisdiction.

Where the traveller is a consumer resident in the European Union, this does not deprive them of the protection of the mandatory rules of the law of their country of residence, nor of the right to bring proceedings in the courts of that country.