What The Biggest Travel Agencies Need To Make Tourism Seamless For Africans And The World

Let’s paint a scenario. Imagine you take a long flight from Lagos, Nigeria to Madrid, Spain. Ready for adventure, you pull out your card to pay for your hotel or a local tour, and it’s declined, not because of fraud, but because the platform you booked through doesn’t accept your currency. You try another one, same story. Now you’re stranded in a foreign country, your funds trapped behind conversion barriers and invisible transaction fees. This isn’t a fictional scenario—it is the reality of many travellers, and this happens more often than travel companies can admit to.

Let’s face it. Travelling in Africa is no easy feat. Most of the world’s biggest online travel agencies — Booking Holdings, Expedia Group, Trip.com, Agoda, etc. — were designed for the Western or developed economies. Their platforms default to USD, EUR, or GBP. Their fraud-risk models don’t fit African realities. They depend on card networks that exclude millions. Meanwhile, African powerhouses like Travelstart, Wakanow, and HotelOnline are doing their best to bridge that gap — but they’re still fighting against global systems built without them in mind. The result is an ecosystem where African consumers pay more to access less.

Africa’s travel and tourism market is no small playfield. It was valued at roughly US $24.50 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach about US $38.01 billion by 2033, growing steadily at around 5% annually. This statistics doesn’t just show potential; it spells the word OPPORTUNITY. But that opportunity is shackled by an outdated reality: the pipes that connect money, travel, and experience in Africa are still leaking.

The pain points are obvious, yet largely ignored. Start with payments: in many African markets, card penetration remains very low in many African countries compared with developed economies, with mobile money and cash payments dominating. So when a traveller in Lagos tries to book a flight to Paris, or a tourist in London tries to pay for accommodation in Nairobi, there’s friction at every click. Beginning from currency conversion to card declines to inflated cross-border fees. Platforms that price exclusively in dollars make life worse for Africans who hold naira, cedis, or shillings, forcing them to pay additional FX costs just to complete a simple booking.

Then there’s currency and pricing asymmetry (money values and prices that don't always change equally). While global OTAs price in major currencies, the African traveller is left at the mercy of volatile exchange rates and banks that block “foreign transactions.” And to make the nightmare worse, there’s also the absence of some local payment options like mobile money or regional debit systems, and the checkout experience almost always becomes the deal-breaker.

Booking and logistics limitations form another major blockade in Africa’s travel ecosystem. Many global booking platforms still fail to integrate local flights, accommodations, and tours, leaving vast parts of the market invisible to international travellers. On the other hand, local companies who often have the regional knowledge and inventory advantage lack the global reach, distribution networks, and advanced payment infrastructure to scale beyond their borders. For example, a hotel in Lagos might accept only local payment methods, but when a foreign traveller attempts to book, the system either fails to recognise the card or rejects the payment outright. This disconnect traps both sides. The travellers lose access to local experiences, and local providers in turn, lose revenue.

This is where travel companies should either evolve or bleed. Because while infrastructure challenges are real, patchy connectivity, regulatory complexity, and unpredictable FX swings shouldn’t be excuses anymore—they’re business opportunities for companies bold enough to fix them.

And that’s why there’s great need for innovation and partnerships. A modern travel company expanding into or operating across Africa cannot win without payment intelligence—and that’s where a partner like Kyshi becomes critical. Acting as a Merchant of Record (MoR) and payment infrastructure layer, Kyshi allows travel platforms to accept local currencies, manage foreign exchange, and handle compliance seamlessly. That means a customer in Accra can pay in cedis, a business in London can get settled in pounds, and a global OTA can operate in multiple markets without opening local entities or absorbing unnecessary FX risk.

The upside is massive. Localised payment rails reduce checkout drop-offs, lower costs, and unlock new customer segments. Travel companies will suddenly have access to the 1.4 billion-strong African market without the usual operational chaos. And African consumers finally get the same frictionless booking experience the rest of the world takes for granted. Yet most global booking sites still treat local currencies as “optional.” That’s a strategic blind spot. Because the travel platforms that embrace local payment experiences will dominate—and those that don’t will be outflanked by smaller, faster African innovators.

Let’s take flights as an example. A significant portion of African flight bookings still happen offline because digital platforms either reject local cards or overcharge through FX mark-ups. A similar problem exists in accommodation, a sector projected to have a volume of US $12.1 billion in 2024. Hotels that can’t process local and international payments efficiently lose bookings to competitors that can. The fix is simple: travel companies need a payments partner that removes the complexity of multi-currency settlements, regional compliance, and real-time conversions.

Failing to innovate in this space comes with real consequences. Travel companies that ignore localisation and payment adaptation risk losing African consumers to more agile local competitors who understand the market’s nuances. Every failed or abandoned checkout translates into higher customer-acquisition costs, as users drop off at the final payment stage out of frustration or distrust. Beyond that, companies expose themselves to unnecessary FX losses, hidden transaction fees, and regulatory or charge-back risks that can quickly erode margins. Even worse, a product that appears globally scalable on paper can crumble in practice if it isn’t built to fit local realities—and that misalignment doesn’t just slow growth; it kills it.

This is why platforms like Kyshi exist and partner with companies from several industries. Imagine if global companies like Booking.com, Priceline, Agoda, Expedia, Hotels.com, Vrbo, Trip.com, Airbnb, MakeMyTrip, Despegar, lastminute.com,  Rakuten Travel, Skyscanner, and so many others; or local players like Travelstart, Wakanow, HotelOnline, TravelYalla.com, and Travelbeta.com, etc. decide to become more intentional toward underserved regions, using the Merchant of Record solution to ensure that everyone—irrespective of country and currency—can access each platform seamlessly and get to their desired destinations with ease. 

Kyshi can help address that by helping businesses move money seamlessly in and out of Africa, whether it’s for ticketing, accommodation, or refunds. By offering infrastructure that connects African and global payment systems, Kyshi helps travel brands reduce friction, increase trust, and expand faster. It’s like moving into Africa without needing staff or a physical structure.

Because the story of African travel isn’t just about more planes and more hotels—it’s about access. Access to payments. Access to platforms. Access to experiences. And that access depends on innovation that sees Africa not as a risk, but as the next destination of growth.

The companies that get this right—the ones that partner with the right infrastructure, that adapt to local realities while keeping global reach, will own the future of travel in Africa. The rest will keep losing customers at checkout.

So the question every travel leader should be asking is simple: Can your travellers pay you easily from anywhere? If not, it may be time to prepare your business for the next billion travellers.

That’s exactly what Kyshi is fixing. You can learn more by visiting kyshi.co, or sending an email to business@kyshi.co.