These guidelines are designed to help you make the most of your Tab account, and to help you work with us to make your payments as secure as possible. If you have any questions about anything covered in this guide, please contact us at hello@tab.travel and we'll be happy to explain further.

When we activate your account, we check your account settings to make sure we have the correct details for you and your bank account.

First, we'll set your account limits. These limits refer to the amount of money you can process per customer and per day as a business. These will be set together when we activate your account but you can also ask us to increase them by emailing us.

You shouldn't split a customer's payment to avoid your limits, please email us for an increase instead. Transaction limits aren’t there to restrict your payments, but they are there for the security of your business and of the Tab system. They are something we

can review over time once there is a history of transactions on the account.

When we activate your account, we'll send your payouts to the bank account that you submitted when you registered. We may request further documents before sending to your bank account for the first time and if there are any issues with any of your payouts, we're here to help.

We can also change bank accounts or add another bank account if you need to. Just email us and we'll request some more information about the new account details. While we review the new details, we may temporarily pause your payouts while we are in the process of approving your new bank account.

Please note that we're not able to online banks or money transfer solutions such as Paypal, Wise, Monzo or Revolut. If you’re not sure whether we can send to a particular bank, please get in touch and we’ll be happy to assist you.

Finally, for general security, we may pause inactive accounts so we'd recommend you process at least 1 transaction per month to ensure we keep your account active. It's really easy to reactivate your account, you'll just need to get in touch to confirm. If you haven't used your account in a while, we'll need to book a quick call to talk to you before we get you active again.

We appreciate that no-shows are a normal part of the tourism industry. The easiest way to deal with no-shows is to immediately charge the customer's card in advance for a deposit or the full amount, as soon as you receive the booking.

You can charge their card directly with Tab's Advance Bookings feature if they booked through Booking.com or Expedia, if you include this in your Booking.com or Expedia terms and conditions.

The other option is to send them a unique payment link so they can guarantee their stay with a deposit.

No-show payments are high-risk payments as there's a higher chance of a customer issuing a chargeback (when a customer disputes a payment with their bank). We expect that no-shows make up no more than 2% of your transaction volume. If your volume of no-shows are higher than this, we may not be able to keep your account open.

Advance bookings are deposited on the date that the customer arrives rather than the date that the customer pays. Regardless of the refund policy on the amount, we have to follow bank rules which require us to send payouts only after the customer has arrived. This is a security measure that works in a similar way to AirBnB, and is designed to keep Tab as safe as possible for your customers and for your business.

There is still significant value to your business when a customer pays in advance. Their booking is fully confirmed and their deposit is guaranteed, so you don’t need to worry about asking for payment in the event of a late cancellation or no-show.

Tab will always offer advice on payments, alongside flagging patterns and behaviours that may be deemed suspicious, but we also know that there is risk associated with any form of card payment, regardless of the payment processor.

To comply with regulations, our team will need to periodically conduct routine assurance checks on payments using Tab. This is to make sure that we keep Tab safe for businesses and travellers. We'll contact you directly and ask for more information, usually supporting evidence (such as customer correspondence on WhatsApp or email, or a booking confirmation from an OTA or booking manager).

You should only take payments directly from your guests (not via third parties), and only for the business named on your Tab account.

Genuine customer email addresses are needed for each payment. It's important we can send receipts and contact customers if there are any problems or disputes.

Though we'll contact you if we flag any suspicious behaviour, we also rely on you, as the business, to report to Tab any concerns you may have about a payment or a customer. Taking card payments always carries some risks, and while Tab is very secure, no payment platform can be 100% safe. The easiest and most robust checks on payments are done in person, so we do expect you to have safe payment practices in place. We're happy to advise if you need help, or you can find some tips here.

When customers arrive, if you have any worries about a customer or payment, we'd recommend you complete a visual cross-check of the customer's name and photo ID against the cardholder name on the card.

You shouldn’t record or store customer card details, but, you can view the last 4 digits of the card your customer used to pay with on your Tab dashboard. You can use these details when you cross-check the credit card presented by the customer.

There are a few specific behaviours to watch out for too, which you should report to Tab so we can help. For example, if the customer:

If at any point you are unsure about a booking, a customer, or for example - the amount of cards involved, we'd highly recommend you reconsider the booking or take payment via another method, such as cash or bank transfer.

Finally, we'll explain a bit more about chargebacks as they occasionally affect Tab businesses.

A chargeback is when a customer disputes their payment directly with their bank.

Chargebacks are possible with all card payments, whether through Tab or another payment provider, and they are a consumer right. However, they're not very common and most businesses will never receive one.

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Customers can issue a chargeback for many reasons, but the most common are:

Unfortunately, the customer's bank usually doesn't tell us the reason for the chargeback.
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At Tab we can help you submit evidence for chargebacks against payments at your business, but we don't provide insurance or cover for chargebacks.

You can read more here.