Booking.com, paying in your own currency

One of the new features from Booking.com, paying in your own currency means creating a better experience for customers traveling to other countries.

Previously,

allowing users to pay for their travels in their own currency, vs using the currency of the property they will be staying at, allows for a better experience.

Questions and thoughts I considered

• The tone is cold, not conversational, and not human.

• Your card is about to be charged sounds very definitive, and I’m not sure how that timing works out. What if I opened this later, or the next day, it wouldn’t make much sense would it?

• What I wanted to cancel, or make changes to my reservation? How would I do that?

• If the amount could change, why am I seeing it now?

• Do I really need to be told to have sufficient funds, or make sure my card doesn’t expire?

• What is the “remaining balance”? Does this mean I’ve made a previous payment?

 My copy approach

Rationale

• Create a warm, human, and conversational tone inline with Booking.com’s values

• Give the user a link to manage their booking to change. or cancel their reservation if needed

• Remove any unnecessary language or clutter to make sure the core of the message, that we’ll automatically charge the card, is conveyed and understood

• Set aside any anxieties for the user by assuring them they don’t have to take any action, and that we’ll confirm the payment once it goes through

For the amount that will change, I pushed to the team to remove the amount and simply let the user know about the automatic charge to avoid confusion. After all, if the amount is going to potentially change, than what good does showing the amount do?

But there were certain legal reasons they wanted to keep it in, so I had to compromise.

Result

At the end of the day, I was successfully able to navigate the content-getting buy off from both legal and product teams.

Testing will be forthcoming.