Can I send my customer a payment link instead of taking their card details over the phone?

Yes, in most cases you can send a payment link so your customer enters their own card details on a secure page and you never have to write anything down or repeat it back over the phone. You build the booking or the quote in the back office as usual, create the link, and send it to the customer by email or by a messaging app. When the payment clears, the booking in your system is marked as paid and your staff can go ahead and issue it.

In practice this works well for customers who are not comfortable buying online on their own, or for group and tailor made trips where you have put the itinerary together by hand. You can usually set how long the link stays valid, see whether it has been opened and whether payment went through, and send a fresh link if the first one expires. Some setups also let you take a deposit first and send a second link for the balance later.

There are limits worth knowing. Payment links come from your payment provider, not from the booking software itself, so what is possible depends on which providers are supported in your country and whether your plan includes that connection. If the booking is sitting on a held fare or a quoted rate, the supplier may not keep that price while you wait for the customer to pay, so a link that sits unopened for too long can mean rebooking at whatever is available then. Rules on refunds and disputed payments stay with your payment provider as well.

Before you rely on it, ask which payment providers can be connected for your market, whether link expiry can be matched to the supplier deadline on each booking, and run one real booking end to end so your staff see exactly what the customer sees.