Inside Agoda’s high-performance payments engine: Issuing and acquiring with Checkout.com

Agoda makes it easy for travelers to explore the world for less. As a global online travel agency, Agoda demands high levels of efficiency. To support this, the company needed a dependable payments partner capable of delivering performance and innovation in equal measure. 

As a highly sophisticated online travel agency (OTA) with its own virtual card program for paying suppliers, Agoda sought out an issuer processing partner who could offer control, flexibility, and resilience to pursue its aggressive growth goals.

Challenge: Can’t pay? Won’t stay

Since 2005, Agoda has delighted travelers with convenient online travel bookings. As the business expanded over time, the need for digital payment solutions grew.

When payments don’t work, travelers could miss out on the reservation and rate they really wanted. It was important Agoda’s next payments partner could offer measurable technological resilience. 

Agoda also needed a provider to support their Merchant of Record issuing model to improve control and efficiency in supplier payments. Ultimately, they sought a true partner with dedicated consultancy and deep product collaboration. 

Solution: Always-on payments and fast-flowing data 

Agoda partnered with Checkout.com, drawn to our ability to support higher transaction volumes while mitigating the risks and complexity of scaling across multiple global markets. 

To support Acquiring services, Agoda has also benefitted from a combination of Real-Time Account Updater, Intelligent Acceptance, and Network Tokens. 

“We needed a payments setup that could handle both acquiring and issuing without the operational overhead of managing separate providers. Working with Checkout.com to consolidate onto one platform gave us the efficiency and control to move quickly on the changes we needed," said Pitichoke Chulapamornsri, Senior Director, Head of Fintech and Business Initiatives at Agoda.

After seeing positive results on acquiring performance, Agoda was ready to include issuer processing support. Together, Checkout.com and Agoda built scalable issuing flows. The Checkout.com team set up Agoda’s BIN to process and approve transactions and provide granular transaction controls, as well as reporting and reconciliation. Agoda uses Checkout.com’s API to manage these parameters and ensure smooth supplier payments.

Onboarding to Checkout.com's platform was smooth – a result of the consistently available expert support and open communication channels. High service-level availability enables Agoda to process large payment volumes with confidence, while ongoing guidance spans 3DS automation, scheme mandates, and fraud prevention strategy. Detailed chargeback reporting helps Agoda to stay compliant with network rules and avoid penalties, alongside granular decline-code analysis and personalized suggestions from Checkout.com’s Account Management team to reduce false declines.  

Results: Improved pay-ins 

By partnering with Checkout.com, Agoda achieved an average 3% uplift in acceptance rate YoY, including a 9% increase between June 2024 and June 2025. This directly translates to revenue, increased customer satisfaction, and improved profitability on payment operations.

Agoda ran experiments on payment traffic between its payment service providers to compare performance. Seeing significant improvements, Agoda’s payment managers routed more payment traffic to Checkout.com in several regions.

As well as technical improvements, Agoda has benefited from dedicated issuer partnership projects to further reduce false declines. For instance, the Checkout.com team reached out to an issuer in Singapore, resulting in the issuer lifting a wrongful fraud block. This led to approximately 30% uplift in acceptance rate on transactions with this issuer.

Agoda has driven value from the strong performance of the Checkout.com platform, noting its resilience and the granularity of reporting.

Agoda now has an efficient, unified single point of contact across acquiring and issuer processing, with connected API integration across the Checkout.com platform. This helps to consolidate reporting and reduces the need to communicate with multiple different suppliers.

Looking ahead

Empowered by cost improvements and smoother operational flows between acquiring and issuing, Agoda looks forward to even more strategic gains for even greater efficiency.

"The results we've seen on acceptance rates and operational costs give us a strong base to build on. We view Checkout.com as a payments partner, and we're excited to see what we can achieve together as we continue to scale," said Pitichoke Chulapamornsri, Senior Director, Head of Fintech & Business Initiatives at Agoda.”

With a unified foundation for acquiring and issuer processing now firmly in place, the partnership is focused on continuous performance optimization. 

Using Checkout.com’s global footprint and deep data insights, Agoda is positioned to consistently refine its acceptance rate and drive operational efficiencies across its global payment flows. Maintaining the highest levels of technical resilience remains a high priority to ensure a smooth experience for travelers, regardless of where they are in the world.