Paying and communicating through Airbnb helps ensure that you're protected under our Terms of Service, cancellation and refund policies, Host Guarantee, Host Protection Insurance program and other safeguards. It also makes it easy to find and reference important reservation details like a listing's address, your itinerary, check-in details, and other useful information. We can’t provide these benefits if your reservation isn’t booked and paid for directly through Airbnb.

Paying or communicating outside of Airbnb also makes it harder for us to protect your information and puts you at greater risk of fraud and other security issues, such as phishing.

Flag suspicious messages

Never pay for your reservation outside of Airbnb. If someone asks you to pay for a reservation outside our on-site payment system—or you think someone might be sending you links to a fake Airbnb site—let us know and click the flag icon in your message thread with that person.