THE NEW DISTRIBUTION CAPABILITY (NDC) 629 4.2. The technology intermediary is called Aggregator The concept of aggregation is a key component to NDC-based distribution. It has three core functions, namely: • Determine which airlines to contact when receiving shopping requests from travel agents • Forward shopping and other requests to the relevant airlines • Consolidate the offer responses from airlines and present results to travel agents. 4.3. The payment flow is impacted by NDC Current payment processes in the industry: • Collection process: the money is collected by the travel agent, using its merchant of record, and then settled with the airline at a later stage, using a mechanism managed by IATA called the Billing and Settlement Plan (BSP). In this case the travel agent bears the cost of the settlement and remittance (approx. 10 cents). The airline trusts the travel agent to collect the money, as the travel agent has gone through an accreditation process with IATA (including financial securities, etc.). The travel agent may accept any form of payment from the end traveller (credit card, check, cash, bank transfer etc.). • Pass through process: the travel agent uses a GDS and enters the customer card details, the GDS will then proceed with payment authorisation. The travel agent will never collect any money, the card payment will be credited to the airline bank. In this case, the airline bears all payment costs, both the BSP (for reporting the payment transaction) and the card cost. It uses its own merchant of record. Payment process in an NDC environment: In the NDC environment, the intermediary does not collect the payment authorisation but simply passes on payment details to the airline, using the “order request” that will trigger the creation of the PNR and ET, or the Order. In addition to be the actual contractual party to the transaction, generally speaking the airline is in a better position to manage payments: it can accept or refuse a specific card and it can process all fraud detection, just as it’s done through direct sales
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTE4NzM5Nw==