There are moments in this industry when progress doesn’t so much arrive as quietly close the door behind something that should have left years ago.
This is one of them.
Conferma has finally done what many suspected would never quite happen: it has switched off fax-based delivery of virtual card payment details across Australia and New Zealand. As of 20 April, the machines that once hummed away in back offices spitting out sensitive payment instructions as if it were still 1998 are effectively redundant.
No fanfare. No ceremony. Just… gone.
And not before time.
A long goodbye to a stubborn survivor
Fax has always been the industry’s guilty secret. While airlines raced ahead with dynamic pricing and hotels flirted with AI-driven personalisation, payments, particularly in corporate travel, remained tethered to a technology better suited to a museum than a modern front desk.
It persisted because it worked. Or rather, it worked just enough.
Until now.
Conferma’s shift is not a tweak. It’s a line drawn firmly under a legacy process that has quietly caused more friction than many care to admit. Failed transmissions, illegible printouts, last-minute calls between hotels and travel management companies, none of it glamorous, all of it familiar.
Setting the tone for what comes next
According to Stuart Davenport, the region has already outgrown the old ways.
“Asia Pacific has already moved beyond fax,” Davenport said. “This change removes the final dependency on an outdated channel, and sets a consistent, digital-first standard for how virtual payments are delivered.”
It’s a statement that lands with quiet confidence rather than bravado. The subtext is clear: the industry has been ready; the systems simply needed to catch up.
From paper trails to digital rails
In practical terms, hotels that once relied on fax will now receive payment details via encrypted email by default. It’s the bare minimum for a digital baseline, but a necessary step nonetheless.
Beyond that sits Conferma’s more sophisticated play API-driven delivery through its Connect Direct platform. This is where things become properly interesting.
Rather than relying on human intervention, payment instructions can flow directly into hotel property management systems. No rekeying. No chasing paperwork. No crossed wires between front desk and back office.
For hotels handling significant corporate volumes, that’s not just efficiency, it’s sanity restored.
Why this matters more than it sounds
Virtual cards are no longer a niche tool; they are the backbone of corporate travel payments. And with that comes expectation.
Travel buyers want certainty. Travellers want seamless check-ins. Finance teams want reconciliation without headaches.
Fax, for all its stubborn longevity, was increasingly the weak link.
By removing it, Conferma is doing more than modernising a process; it’s stripping out a layer of avoidable complexity that has quietly drained time and resources across the ecosystem.
TMCs, in particular, will feel the difference. Anyone who has spent an afternoon chasing a failed fax will understand just how much “invisible work” disappears overnight with this move.
A nudge or a shove for the industry
The ANZ rollout is only the beginning. Wider Asia-Pacific markets are next, with a clear runway toward a global shutdown of fax by the end of 2026.
Hotels are now being encouraged politely but firmly to ensure they have secure digital delivery methods in place. The message is unmistakable: adapt now, or risk being left behind.
There’s a certain old-school logic to it. Standardisation drives efficiency. Efficiency drives scale. And scale, in this business, tends to separate the leaders from the rest.
The final word
If there’s a lesson here, it’s that legacy systems rarely disappear on their own. They need a push.
Conferma has provided it.
And while the fax machine may not receive a formal farewell, it will at least be remembered fondly by some, reluctantly by most, as a tool that served its time before finally conceding to a faster, cleaner, and altogether more sensible way of doing business.
Progress, in other words, has arrived. Not with a bang, but with the quiet satisfaction of something being done properly at last.
by Octavia Koo – (c) 2026.
Read Time: 3 minutes.
About the Author.
Octavia Koo arrived in Australia in the early eighties with little fuss and a good eye. Sydney suited her. At UNSW, she studied Arts, then found her footing in graphic design before drifting, quite naturally, into the digital side of things, building websites and shaping words that made people want to stay.
Singapore followed, and with it, the fast pace of tourism platforms and ITB Asia. Long before SEO became a buzzword, Octavia understood how stories travelled online. That’s where she met Stephen, and the seed for something more was planted.
A few years later, she joined Global Travel Media.
Today, Octavia works with quiet assurance, blending art, instinct and experience to produce stories that don’t shout; they simply work and linger.
