Every year, international travellers spend billions of dollars on African safaris, luxury lodges and holiday experiences. Yet before much of that money reaches the businesses providing those experiences, a portion is lost to payment processing fees, foreign exchange charges and the cost of moving money across borders. 

For African tourism operators, getting paid can be surprisingly expensive. 

TurnStay, a South African fintech that helps travel businesses accept payments from international guests, believes that problem has been overlooked for too long. 

Alon Stern, TurnStay’s chief executive officer (CEO) and co-founder, said the three-year-old startup processed over R1 billion ($60.6 million) in travel payments during the first six months of 2026. The company provides payment infrastructure for hotels, safari lodges, tour operators and villa agencies,  helping them reduce the cost of accepting international bookings.

The milestone underscores a broader challenge facing Africa’s tourism sector.  While many operators compete for the same global travellers as hotels and tour companies elsewhere in the world, they often pay significantly more simply to receive payment. Card network fees, foreign exchange spreads, cross-border acquiring costs, and can collectively consume a meaningful share of booking revenue, eroding margins and reducing the amount of tourism income that ultimately remains on the continent.

“Getting paid can be expensive in the travel industry, and for a long time African merchants have carried a much heavier cost than their overseas counterparts for doing exactly the same job,” said Stern.

He stated that traditional payment processing for international travel bookings can cost African merchants as much as 8% of a transaction. By combining a merchant-of-record…