LATAM Sub-Region

Supported Countries

As Stripe is only able to process payments for clients in Puerto Rico and Mexico, our primary payment processor for the vast majority of the LATAM is currently PayPal. See the table below for a full list of supported countries, the payment service providers (PSPs), and currencies available to them.

Country	PSP(s)	Currency	Status
Argentina	PayPal	USD	Live
Belize	PayPal	USD	Live
Brazil	PayPal	BRL	Live
Chile	PayPal	USD	Live
Colombia	PayPal	USD	Live
Costa Rica	PayPal	USD	Live
Dominican Republic	PayPal	USD	Live
Ecuador	PayPal	USD	Live
Guatemala	PayPal	USD	Live
Honduras	PayPal	USD	Live
Mexico	Stripe, PayPal	MXN, USD	Live
Nicaragua	PayPal	USD	Live
Panama	PayPal	USD	Live
Peru	PayPal	USD	Live
Puerto Rico	Stripe	USD	Live
Uruguay	PayPal	USD	Live

Check our Supported Countries and Currencies help page for updates.

Mexico

Payment options: MXN (Stripe) or USD (PayPal)

Generally speaking, clients will get a better user experience with Stripe / MXN as some new features aren’t immediately available on PayPal Dashboards. They’ll also benefit from a lower processing fee (3.6% + 3.0 MXN) than with PayPal. However, for clients that insist upon charging in USD, PayPal / USD is their only option in most cases.

Puerto Rico

Payment option: USD (Stripe)

Puerto Rico poses no complications when it comes to payment processing due to the fact that it’s a US territory that uses USD. Clients there can easily provide the details necessary to verify their customer information with Stripe (social security number and employee identification number).

Stripe vs. PayPal

Although Stripe is our preferred payment processor because it is directly integrated with FareHarbor and provides our clients with the best UX and processing fee rates, PayPal has made it possible for companies to use FareHarbor in many countries that weren’t able to use it before. When discussing the differences between these two payment processors, it is important to understand the key differences between the two. Here are some of the key differences PayPal has with Stripe:

• Inability to take direct booking using a credit card using PayPal
• Disputes are handled through PayPal, not FareHarbor
• PayPal payments won’t be shown in the Payouts & Refunds report or the Credit Card Disputes reports.
• PayPal’s processing fees vary region to region and depending on factors such as volume (revenue), country, and currency. Therefore, it’s best practice not to speculate rates to clients but instead send them this PayPal help article.
• At this time, deposits are post-booking payments are not available to PayPal clients.
• See this help page for an entire run-down of the differences between Stripe and PayPal.

PayPal Requirements:

Using a PayPal business account, clients can collect in USD (except in Brazil) and have their money transferred to their local bank account. Their PayPal account must be opened in the country where they operate and match the processor country set in the Dashboard. PayPal automatically recognizes the location of the device being used to set up the account based on the user’s IP address and requires the business address to match that country.

Stripe Verification Requirements — MXN:

For Mexican clients who wish to charge in MXN, clients are required to add ownership information (name, address, contact info, ID) and their RFC (Mexican tax ID number) in the Bank & Payments section of the dashboard.

Stripe Verification Requirements — USD:

In order to charge in USD with Stripe, companies must be able to provide the same details as any American business owner, including a Social Security Number (SSN) and Employer Identification Number (EIN). For reference, only citizens and permanent residents of the U.S. and its territories (e.g. Puerto Rico) have SSN’s. Since this isn’t the case for your average Mexican or Costa Rican business owner, charging in USD with Stripe isn’t listed as a standard option above for any of the countries above. There are some rare exceptions to this rule though:

• Business is owned by an American or has an American business partner
  • Example: sn: wildcabotours
• Business owner is able to obtain an ITIN (international tax ID number) from the US
  • Example: sn: candoorentals

In the examples listed above, the Processor country in the dashboard has to be set as the United States, even though these companies operate in Mexico. This is the only way to set the Processor currency to USD. Aside from these exceptions, we typically require the dashboard country to match the actual country of operation for Stripe. You can check this for any dashboard under Advanced Settings>General.

Tax Documents for USA Dashboards: All companies with a Stripe / USA dashboard will be sent a 1099-K to the address entered for verification. Though we should not give specific tax advice to clients, LATAM clients with USA dashboards should be aware that they may be required to prove to the IRS that they pay taxes in their country of operation—otherwise they could be responsible for filing in the US.

Stripe Re-verification KYC Initiative

Prior to the release of PayPal, we had a significant amount of LATAM accounts outside of Puerto Rico that were onboarded with Stripe as the payment processor and USA / USD as the Processor country / currency. After Stripe rolled out multiple KYC (know your customer) initiatives in 2022, we had to rebuild and offboard the majority of these dashboards because clients were unable to provide the required Social Security Number (SSN) and / or Employer Identification Number (EIN) to verify their customer information. On April 28, 2022, payments and payouts were disabled for all remaining dashboards that were missing this information. Surprisingly enough, we still come across companies with unverified dashboards that were never offboarded (see escalations section below). Moving forward, most LATAM clients are onboarded with one of the payment setups listed in the Supported Countries table above.

Clients in LATAM have a unique style of communication compared to those in the U.S. Many rely on WhatsApp to communicate with each other as well as with us if you so choose. Using this app is entirely optional and completely understandable if you choose not to. Clients already have multiple ways to reach out to us without adding this to the mix. However, WhatsApp is very handy in that it’s a quick and efficient way to correspond with clients – as long as it doesn’t become excessive. We recommend only mentioning your ability to use WhatsApp with T2+ clients and even then, set some parameters.

• Only enable notifications on your Mac using the desktop app, not your phone
• Set an away message for when they contact you outside of business hours with a message along the lines of: “thanks for reaching out – you’ve contacted me outside of my business hours which are… for more immediate assistance, please reach out to the support team at 855-495-5551 or 808-495-0244 / support@fareharbor.com

How to set up WhatsApp Business:

• Download WhatsApp Business on your iPhone or Android and set it up with your Close phone number (not your personal number!). Then connect it with the desktop app on your Mac so that you can respond to messages there.
• Be sure to log your WhatsApp correspondence in Close as a call by clicking the dropdown next to the ‘Call Button’ – that way it’s accounted for! Simply copy and paste your message thread for the given day and if it’s in Spanish, provide a brief summary of what was discussed.

Helpful FH / technical terms in Spanish

You can find some common vocab in this spreadsheet. Feel free to add to it as needed!

Instructions to have us added as admins in Google Analytics:

1. Ingresar en la cuenta de Google Analytics
2. Hacer clic en ‘Admin’
3. Hacer clic en ‘User Management’
4. Agregar el usuario [analytics-aXX@fareharbor.com] e incluir los permisos ‘Read’, ‘Collaborate’, ‘Edit & Analyze’.
5. Avísame cuando lo hagas!

Country Codes, SMS, and Unavailable Numbers

Please make sure to use the correct country code when adding new numbers in Close. They will always have a ‘+’ before them, like +506 for Costa Rica and +52 for Mexico. Sometimes Close will try to add a +1 before a number, so make sure that doesn’t happen to avoid any errors in calling. You can refer to this page for a list of global country codes.

It is very common to get a message saying a number is unavailable (el número que Ud. marcó no está disponible o temporalmente está fuera de servicio). This doesn’t necessarily mean it has been permanently changed but more likely that your client may be out of cell coverage or their phone is turned off. On the other hand, it is also normal for clients to switch numbers since many buy new phones and add prepaid minutes using a calling card.

In Close, we are only able to send SMS messages to US numbers, so this option will only be applicable for your Puerto Rico clients.

Most clients in LATAM cater to English-speaking customers and thus have websites and Dashboards in English. Some however also have translations in Spanish or other languages, which presents some key considerations for Dashboards.

Dashboard Language

Dashboard language, found in advanced settings, must match the default language of the Dashboard, i.e. the language that their item descriptions, canned messages, and policies are written in. This means that clients can’t view the backend of their Dashboard in a different language unfortunately. Typically clients are onboarded with Dashboards in English and therefore they are required to manage their Dashboard in that language. If the default language of their Dashboard is in Spanish, then they can and have to view their Dashboard in Spanish.

In the example below, you can see that everything that is hard-coded (the things you can’t change) are in Spanish because the Dashboard language is set to Spanish. The customer types, public headlines, and custom fields are all in English because that is the default language of the Dashboard, i.e. that was used when building the ‘Clearboat to the Arch’ item. This should be avoided because it is bad for UX and will most likely have a negative impact on conversions.

What needs to happen in this case is that the Dashboard language needs to be changed to English in advanced settings. Dashboard users will then see their Dashboard in that language. Unfortunately there currently is no way to have Dashboards appear in a different language to users in the back-end.

If a Dashboard has translations enabled in advanced settings, you can see what the default language is by going to Settings > Translations and then click any of the languages that appear:

Dashboard Translations

Clients may ask to add translations to their Dashboard, which can be a bit daunting. Here’s a client-facing help page you can send them – also handy for your own knowledge. If adding translations to the Dashboard is too much of an undertaking for your client but they still want to enable that option for their customers, you can check the box “Allow online customers to book in any language FareHarbor supports” in advanced settings to allow translation of FareHarbor’s content into other languages besides those that the company has added.

For those that are able to add translations to their Dashboard, once a client completes the translations in their Dashboard, they need to be set to active in order for them to appear for end-users whose browsers are set to that language. To do this, go to Settings > Translations > Edit and then click the ‘Settings’ tab. There you’ll check the box next to ‘Active’.

Once a translation is active, you’ll see a green checkmark in the ‘Active’ column in the translations area of the Dashboard.

Keep in mind that when this setting is enabled, online customers may end up seeing book forms and emails that are partially translated, since the setting does not apply to the company’s own content.

Read more about Dashboard translations in this internal help page.

FareHarbor Sites Translations

Clients on a FHS may request to have translations added to their site. The sites team now requires the Dashboard to be translated first so you may have to walk them through the process above. If this is too much of an undertaking for your client (keep in mind it’s on them to maintain these languages anytime they want to change something), you can always offer to enable Google Translate for them on their FHS.

If a client is able to add translations to their Dashboard (translating their items is a minimum requirement), then you can submit a sites ticket to have translations added to their site. The LSS team will then put together a translation document that basically goes through their entire website page by page, line by line, and allows for the client to add their translations alongside the original language of the website. They’ll send this document over to the client to complete; once this is done the project will be assigned to a WCS (site builder) in EMEA and they will add the translation to the site. Keep in mind that the Sites team has to use the translation doc that they send to the client to complete – they can’t work with translations simply sent over from client in their own format because they don’t take into account SEO fields like title tags and meta descriptions (which all get translated too). The translation doc that the sites team puts together is also way more organized and easier for a WCS to use when completing a translation project.

Below are some examples of some of our highest producing clients in LATAM, with Puerto Rico excluded due to the fact that the payment processing challenges we face in the majority of the region are nonexistent there. These companies and their related leads are great sources of inspiration when it comes to finding out what works well in the region.

• Native’s Way (nativesway)
• Jet’s Private Boat Tours (jetsprivateboattours)
• Akumal Monkey Sanctuary (veatripsandtours)
• Volare (volare)

FareHarbor of course is a very flexible platform for a wide array of different types of tour and activity operators. There are however many examples of companies that fall into this broad category in LATAM that are bad fits for our platform. They often result in poor performance in terms of online revenue and ultimately high churn for us.

Any company with ‘DMC’ (Destination Management Company) in the name should be a red flag for our sales team. These are ubiquitous in Latin America. On paper (online) they may look like massive operators that serve entire countries like Argentina for example. Most of the time, these companies hire out all of their service to various charter companies and never gain much traction getting bookings online. Sometimes these companies have Dashboards with 100+ items built out in them and never receive a single booking through FareHarbor. Fortunately our sales team has shifted its strategy and we’re seeing less and less companies like this onboarded.

Here are a few examples of shortnames for current FareHarbor companies that have very sizable Dashboards (some even have FareHarbor sites) and have yielded abysmally low results in terms of booking fees:

• turitransmerida
• gotour / gotourmxn

LATAM clients are able to list their tours on most major OTAs, the key is that their Dashboard currency matches the currency they have selected in Viator for example. With the launch of Google Things to Do, even clients on PayPal are able to sell their experiences there since FareHarbor-hosted links are now used. This was formerly not an option on Reserve with Google. To check and see if a client has been opted in for Google TTD, go to their lead in Close and look for Google under the ‘Connectivity – Live’ custom field.

Most of our T0 clients based in LATAM are part of the LATAM Pool, meaning that they do not have a designated Account Manager and are only managed on a reactive basis. When speaking to these clients, please do not use the term “your” when referring to an Account Manager. Instead say, “I’m calling from the Account Management Team” or “an Account Manager” will be in touch. You can check to see what companies are in this pool at any time by using this Smart View:

custom.AM:“latam” sort:-“Account Tier” lead_status:“Live Customer”

In Close, ‘LATAM Team’ will appear in ‘AM’ Custom Field.

Escalations

When an escalation comes in from Support or another team, they will post it in the #account-management channel and use “LATAM Team Escalation” option in the workflow, which automatically tags all LATAM-AM’s in @latam-am.

The Small Business Account Manager for LATAM (SB-LATAM) will primarily be responsible for handling these escalations. However; if that person is inundated with escalations or out of the office, Mid-Market AM’s for LATAM will be asked to jump in and assist. Escalations for the LATAM Pool should be claimed within 24 hours by reacting to the post in #account-management channel with an emoji. The expectation is that the client is contacted via phone or email within 2 business days.. After the client is contacted, please close the escalation using the ‘CX to AM Notification Complete’ Custom Activity in Close and pasting the Activity ID in the field that appears.

For Support: More information on T0 Escalations can be found here.

SUR / Offboarding

Sometimes accounts in the LATAM pool will go into SUR or need to be offboarded. In these cases, an AM will either try and win back the account or offboard them, if necessary. This will primarily be the responsibility of the SB-LATAM, but sometimes Mid-Market AM’s will be looped in to assist if the list grows long. For T0’s, please refer to the Offboard Decision Tree to determine if a company can be Auto-Offboarded (without going through the normal SUR protocol)

Uptiers

Every once in a while, an LATAM accounts will be uptiered. When this happens, they may be moved accordingly by your manager or Account Ops. In the case of LATAM Pool clients moving from T0>T1, they will be moved to the SB-LATAM; in the case of T1>T2 they’ll be moved to a Mid-Market AM and in the case of T3>T4, they’ll be moved to our Spanish-speaking AM on the ENT team.

Downtiers

As tiering accounts in LATAM can be very challenging, sometimes an account in your portfolio will be downtiered and go from having an assigned AM to being in the pool. Since clients aren’t aware of tiering and shouldn’t ever be, it can challenging to get them to stop coming to you for requests. In this case, we need to encourage them to go directly to support for all of their needs and if the Account Management team is required, an AM will be looped in through an escalation from Support. Here is a message you can use in this case:

Quería comentarte que nuestro equipo de Gestión de Cuentas para tu región está creciendo y por eso, estamos cambiando nuestras estrategias para mejor apoyar a nuestros clientes. Por eso, vamos a apoyar a nuestros clientes en la región como un equipo así que cuando tengas una solicitud en el futuro, pedimos que te pongas en contacto con el equipo de Soporte Técnico primero y si resulta que tu solicitud requiere el apoyo de mi equipo, ellos nos avisarán y uno de nosotros se pondrá en contacto contigo.

“Client is frustrated because s/he can’t make a refund for a canceled booking.”

This scenario often comes up with our Mexican clients due to the fact that we cannot debit MXN bank accounts. In order for a client to be able to process a refund, they must therefore have funds in their refund reserve [Settings > Bank & Payments > Refund Reserve] and/or future payouts. Typically their recurring transfer will be turned off in this scenario, in which case the first step is to enable it and set it to transfer as much as is needed to issue the refund from future payouts to the refund reserve. For example, if the client needs to refund a booking total of $16,000 MXN, you should set up recurring transfer as follows:

The next step is to wait for enough future bookings to come in to fill the refund reserve to the desired limit. Unfortunately there’s no way to force this – clients have to be patient. Encourage them to reach out to their customers and give them an approximate ETA on when their refund will be sent, keeping in mind that they can take 3-5 business days to reach their account. The key here is to avoid a credit card dispute from the customer.

If the mentions refunding the customer outside FareHarbor via Venmo, PayPal, or cash, you should STRONGLY discourage this action. If the customer later disputes, FareHarbor will not be able to prove that the customer was refunded outside our system and the client could end up being out double what they owe.

If the client doesn’t foresee getting any bookings in the immediate future, they can either make a direct booking using their own card (keeping in mind that they’ll be charged the credit card processing fee). This should only be done in rare, one-off circumstances and for relatively small amounts. The other option is to do a Top-Up transfer which is a fairly involved and time-consuming process – this is only recommended where there are no other options and/or the client has a large sum of bookings to refund.

“Mexican client wants to switch their Dashboard currency.”

When clients based in Mexico are onboarded, they are presented with the payment option(s) available to them depending on their needs. As mentioned above, they essentially have two options: they can a) charge in MXN using Stripe or b) charge in USD using PayPal. If a Mexican client wishes to switch currencies in their existing Dashboard, this is only possible if they haven’t taken a single booking. After that point, Dashboard currency cannot be changed. In rare instances, we can offer to rebuild a client’s Dashboard if we deem it is a worthwhile investment.

Things to consider:

• How long has the company been live? If they went live less than 60 days ago and adamantly want to switch currencies, we can send them back to the OB team to sort out.
• What tier is the company? If it’s lower than a T2, we should most likely keep this option off the table
• If applicable, how much have they made us in BF’s this year or in the last 12 months?
• How many items do they have in their existing Dashboard? If they have 25+ items, we should avoid this option

Below is a decision tree that may help in deciding whether it is a) possible and b) worthwhile to switch Dashboard currency for a client in Mexico:

After you’ve considered these questions, reach out to a LATAM team lead or manager if you think a Dashboard rebuild is worthwhile. Then fill out this form.

For clients that charge in MXN but want to cater to American customers that are more comfortable seeing prices in USD, we can offer to put approximate USD conversions of their prices in both customer type and item headlines. We recommend asking the client what exchange rate they want us to use for these fields. The key thing to remember is that these won’t change automatically when there is a fluctuation in exchange rates or the client updates their prices. Make it clear that it is the client’s responsibility to keep these fields up to date.