Singapore, 20 April 2010 – SOTA has announced collaboration with PayPal, a global leader in online payments. The partnership makes it very easy for travel agents using the SOTA platform to make or receive cross-border payments online.

SOTA — Standard Online Tourism Architecture — is a one-stop e-tourism platform for technology, marketing and innovation.  It is already being used by over 16,000 travel operators. The SOTA platform was developed by Malaysia-based Creative Advances Technology, a leading provider of online tourism solutions and has been supported by several international travel organizations such as The Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) and ASEANTA (Association of South East Asian Nationals Travel Association).

Rohizam Md Yusoff, CEO of Creative Advances Technology, said that travel agents can now use PayPal to receive online payments effortlessly and securely from customers anywhere in the world in 24 different currencies.

“The PayPal payment solution does not require paying any setup or monthly fees,” said Mr Rohizam. “Most importantly, our travel agents can conduct secure transactions without having to worry about storing sensitive customer data,” he said.

Mario Shiliashki, General Manager of PayPal Southeast Asia and India, said that PayPal’s research has shown that online shopping has gained real traction across Asia, with more than 50% of shoppers likely to make purchases online.[1]

“This is the right time for SOTA to add real value to its members and make it easy for them to grow their business online,” said Mr Shiliashki.  “PayPal is pleased to help CAT enhance SOTA’s offerings to its users.”

PayPal has over 81 million active accounts in 190 markets and supports 24 currencies around the world. With this collaboration, PayPal will provide a secure payment system for travel agents to receive online payments from their customers through SOTA.

Since launching in August 2009, SOTA has quickly expanded to provide travel agents with an integrated online travel business solution throughout Asia.  To get started on SOTA, travel agents only pay US$100. This is a pre-paid amount which is earned back almost immediately from the leads generated to the travel agent.  SOTA deducts US$1 from the pre-paid amount for every lead generated to the agent.

SOTA members have the privilege of enjoying a special reduced PayPal transaction fee for all cross-border transactions from 3.9% + US$0.30 to only 2% + US$0.30 + a SOTA platform fee.  Please refer to www.sotanetwork.com for terms and conditions. For detailed information on PayPal’s cross-border fees, please visit: https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_display-xborder-fees-outside&country