IATA has confirmed that rollout of its NewGen ISS and
Transparency in Payments
(TIP) programmes will take
place in South Africa in
August.
The association says new
functionalities are being
incorporated in parallel
with TIP’s roll-out, including
the possibility for agents
to enrol their own agency
cards. This, says Marco
Cristofoli, ceo of BCD
Travel, would be great news
for the industry. He says
the functionality would
be particularly useful for
SME agents as a cash-flow
management tool.
Airlines blocking the use
of travel agent cards has
been an ongoing bugbear in
the industry. Iata amended
its resolutions to allow the
use of agent cards, but
only if an airline had given
the agent approval. Airlines
then released individual
statements advising that
they would not accept agent
card payments.
According to the latest
Passenger Agency
Programme Global Joint
Council (PAPGJC) meeting
agenda notes, TIP was
updated in November 2018
to specifically allow Iataaccredited agents to enrol
their own cards and be
notified about individual
airline consents. However,
Iata was unable to confirm
whether any airlines had
given their consent for the
use of any agency cards.
Functionality of TIP
Iata’s TIP project focuses
on providing airlines with
increased transparency and
control. It is also intended to
enable travel agents to take
advantage of new forms of
payment.
According to an Iata
spokesperson, if an airline
consents to agent card
payments, the airline will
bear the merchant fee. He
also told TNW, however, that
as part of airlines’ consent
policies, they may choose to
apply a cost-recovery fee to
the agent for the use of a
particular agent own card or
product.
According to the PAPGJC
agenda notes, the below
functionalities will be
available for all countries
that go live with TIP:
Providers of Alternative
Transfer Method (ATM)
products are able to
enlist with Iata and enrol
their products. ATMs
are payment products
specifically designed for
travel agents and can be
physical or virtual cards or
account numbers.
Participating airlines are
able to define in BSPlink
their consent policy to the
ATMs enrolled with Iata.
Iata-accredited agents are
able to consult the list
of enrolled ATM airlineapproved products.
Iata-accredited agents can
set up an email alert to be
informed of any changes
to consent set-up from an
airline on ATM products.
TNW understands that
more than 100 agent cards
have been registered across
18 BSP regions.
