Can I take payment from my customer by bank transfer or in cash and still confirm the booking on my portal?

Yes, you can. A booking portal does not force every sale through a card payment page. When a customer pays you by bank transfer, or hands over cash at your counter, your staff can make the booking from the back office and mark it as paid by that method, so the ticket or voucher is issued in the normal way and your records still show how the money came in.

This is how most agencies handle walk in customers and regular corporate clients who prefer to settle by transfer at the end of the month. The customer never has to touch the payment page at all. You simply confirm the booking once you are satisfied the money has arrived, and the confirmation that goes out to the traveller looks exactly the same as one paid by card.

The honest part is that the money still has to be with the supplier for the ticket to be issued, and that comes out of your own account or deposit rather than from the customer's card. So the risk of taking a booking before the transfer has actually cleared sits with you, not with the supplier. Which payment methods you can record, and whether the portal can hold a booking as unpaid until you release it, depends on how your setup is configured and on the plan you are on.

Before you offer transfer or cash terms widely, agree with your team a simple rule about who is allowed to confirm a booking that has not been paid for yet, and check that your sales reports show the payment method clearly so nothing gets lost at the end of the month.