A system built on dependency

In the traditional setup, every participant in the tax-free value chain depends on a single operator’s proprietary infrastructure.
Retailers must integrate bespoke terminals or software provided by the operator, with little room to customize the experience or control the data. Travelers, in turn, are routed through branded kiosks, mobile apps, or physical counters that belong to the operator — not to the store or brand they purchased from. Customs, meanwhile, receive fragmented data exports that rarely align in format or timing, forcing manual reconciliation and introducing unnecessary administrative delays.

This dependency has shaped an entire industry around closed loops. Each operator maintains its own ecosystem of merchants, data pipelines, and refund mechanisms — effectively isolating participants from one another. A retailer integrated with one operator cannot easily work with another. A payment provider looking to innovate around tax-free must rebuild the integration from scratch. Even Customs, the ultimate authority on compliance, often have to navigate multiple incompatible data structures to perform the same validation task.

The result is a fragmented landscape where innovation is slow and interoperability is optional. When every improvement requires bilateral agreements or closed integrations, progress becomes expensive — and the entire ecosystem pays the cost. The lock-in may be commercial, but the consequences are structural: no matter how digital the front-end becomes, the underlying flows remain siloed.

This dependency doesn’t only affect user experience; it constrains strategic growth. Retailers can’t build on top of tax-free journeys or integrate them into loyalty programs. Payment partners can’t embed refund capabilities directly into cards or wallets. Regulators can’t access real-time compliance data to automate control. In essence, the industry continues to operate like it’s 1999 — even though the rest of commerce has already moved on.

A new model: enabling instead of operating

Vasco Tax Free was created to reverse this logic.
We see VAT refunds not as a product to own, but as a capability to enable — securely, transparently, and at scale.

Through an open, API-based infrastructure, Vasco provides the regulatory and transactional backbone of tax-free shopping, while letting each participant — retailer, payment provider, or travel platform — control their own front-end experience.

This shift from operator to enabler represents more than a technological choice. It’s a new way to define roles and responsibilities across the ecosystem. Instead of one actor owning the journey end-to-end, Vasco focuses on providing the foundational layer: compliant data handling, validation workflows, refund settlement, and Customs reporting — all accessible via secure REST APIs and webhooks.

On top of this foundation, partners can build their own experiences: a merchant might integrate tax-free directly in their checkout app; a marketplace might automate refund issuance from the order screen; a payment platform might offer card-linked refunds that settle instantly.

This headless approach means VAT refunds can live wherever the traveler already is: in a store’s app, in a PSP’s wallet, or inside a marketplace checkout flow.

No rebranding, no lock-in — just compliant functionality that adapts to existing systems, rather than forcing them to adapt to yet another intermediary.

What this changes for everyone

Quite simply:

• For retailers: tax-free becomes an owned touchpoint. They can extend loyalty programs into the refund journey, view data in real time, and maintain control over the customer relationship. Refunds are no longer outsourced; they are integrated into the brand experience.
• For payment providers: tax-free becomes another embedded service — seamlessly integrated into cards, accounts, or wallets. Refunds can be issued instantly, reconciled automatically, and delivered within the same UX the traveler already trusts.
• For customs: each refund is verifiable at source, based on transparent digital records that comply with EU standards and national systems like PABLO. Audits and reconciliations become data-driven rather than declarative.
• For travelers: the process becomes what it should have been all along — fast, consistent, and trustworthy. No duplicate forms, no opaque delays, no conflicting information.

In this model, Vasco’s role is not to appear in front of the traveler, but to make sure every experience — whichever interface it lives in — is compliant, connected, and efficient behind the scenes. We operate in the background, but we make the system work in the foreground.

Infrastructure over ownership

The transition from “operator” to “enabler” mirrors what has already happened in other industries.
In payments, open banking replaced proprietary rails with shared access and standardized APIs. In commerce, headless architectures allowed brands to innovate freely while maintaining consistent infrastructure underneath. In travel, NDC and open data models have redefined how airlines distribute fares.

The same shift is now coming to tax-free. The next generation of refund infrastructure won’t be defined by who owns the traveler, but by who empowers the ecosystem to serve them better.

When compliance, speed, and transparency coexist, the incentives of travelers, merchants, and customs finally align. Operators stop competing on control and start collaborating on standards — creating a healthier, more efficient system for everyone.

A quiet transformation

At Vasco, we believe meaningful progress doesn’t come from louder marketing or flashier apps — it comes from better foundations.
Our goal is not to replace existing actors, but to make it easier for everyone — from retailers to regulators — to work together on a common framework.

This transformation won’t be noisy. It will happen quietly, in code, in integrations, and in cleaner data flows. But its impact will be visible everywhere: fewer errors, faster refunds, stronger compliance, and simpler operations.

The tax-free industry doesn’t need another intermediary. It needs infrastructure that brings clarity where there was opacity, flexibility where there was lock-in, and trust where there was dependency.

The real transformation happens not when someone owns the journey — but when everyone can build on it.