When complex payments and foreign exchange unpredictability became a challenge, African Safari Excellence teamed up with Roam to streamline their payments.
A leading ground operator based in Tanzania, African Safari Excellence (ASE) specialises in bespoke safari experiences across East Africa. Renowned for its personalised, high-quality adventures, ASE has built a loyal global network of travel agents. However, like many businesses in the tourism industry, ASE faced significant payment challenges—particularly in managing inbound transactions from agents for bookings and outbound payments to suppliers across multiple destinations and currencies. This is where Roam’s innovative payment infrastructure provided a seamless solution.
Challenges Faced by African Safari Excellence
Before implementing Roam, ASE was dealing with several payment-related issues that hindered operational efficiency:
- Complex Payment Processes: ASE worked with agents across multiple countries, each with its own payment systems, currencies and regulations. The complexity of coordinating these payments and ensuring they were processed on time was a major pain point.
- Slow Payment Reconciliation: The traditional methods of processing payments (especially bank transfers) took time, often leading to delays in confirming bookings, settling commissions, and ensuring that funds were available for safari bookings and other logistics.
- Currency Conversion and Fees: As ASE’s agents were based in different regions, currency conversion became a frequent challenge. Currency exchange fees and unpredictable exchange rates further complicated the financial workflow, impacting ASE’s bottom line and creating friction for agents.
Roam’s Solution
Roam’s payment platform offered a comprehensive, seamless solution to address these pain points. With Roam’s infrastructure, ASE now has the ability to facilitate faster, more secure payments to and from their agent network, both locally and internationally. The platform provides:
- Multi-currency support: Roam allows payments to be made in multiple currencies, reducing the complexity and cost of currency exchange for ASE and their agents.
- Faster Processing Times: Transactions are processed in real-time, drastically reducing the delays ASE once experienced when handling payments. This efficiency helps ASE manage bookings, confirmations and financial settlements without unnecessary lag.
- Simplified Payment Management: With Roam’s centralised Agent Zone, ASE can track payments from their agents, view reports and ensure that funds are properly reconciled without manually chasing down payments or dealing with banking delays.
- Low Transaction Costs: Roam’s platform minimises the fees typically associated with cross-border payments by up to 60%, improving ASE’s profitability and providing better commission payouts for their agents.
Impact on African Safari Excellence
Since integrating Roam into their operations, ASE has experienced significant improvements across various aspects of their business. One of the most notable changes has been in the speed and ease of payments from their agent network. The real-time transaction capabilities have eliminated many of the delays that previously plagued the company’s operations, enabling ASE to confirm bookings more quickly and provide better service to their clients.
Additionally, Roam’s multi-currency support has been a game-changer for ASE’s business model, as it has simplified the payment process for both local and international agents. ASE no longer needs to worry about the fluctuating exchange rates and high conversion fees that used to eat into their margins.
“Since adopting Roam’s payment infrastructure, the efficiency and speed with which we manage payments have drastically improved. Our agent network is now able to process payments faster, with fewer hurdles and much lower fees. This has significantly reduced the time we spent managing payment issues, allowing us to focus more on what we do best—creating unforgettable safari experiences for our clients. Roam’s platform has truly transformed the way we do business, and the results speak for themselves. The reduced processing time and the simplification of payments across borders has been invaluable to our operations.”
Lynn Middelmann, General Manager at ASE
Roam’s payments infrastructure has been a vital tool in helping African Safari Excellence streamline their payment processes, reduce operational friction and enhance their relationships with agents. Get in touch to find out how was can help your business thrive.
