TRAVELPORT has teamed up with
ACI Worldwide, a leading provider
of electronic banking and payment
solutions, to launch Travelport
Authorize Plus, an intelligent fraud
control and settlement solution for its
airline and agent customers to reduce
industry losses.
According to Iata, the global airline
industry incurs losses of $1bn
(R12bn) annually from fraudsters
using stolen, compromised or fake
credit card details to buy airline
tickets. Dinesh Naidoo, group
operations director of Serendipity
Worldwide Group, says the South
African travel agent industry alone
loses millions of rands per year.
Otto de Vries, ceo of Asata, says he
has seen genuine commitment from
all stakeholders in the travel industry
to mitigate fraud. Commenting on the
new solution, he says, “Any product
that helps to manage fraud and
benefit airlines, agents and the trade
should be applauded.”
Travelport Authorize Plus is an
airline-driven product, meaning that
agents can only make use of it
on tickets bought on airlines that
have implemented it. Once it is
implemented, both airlines
and agents can seamlessly
track ticketing purchase
processes right through to
the completion of a journey.
Marco Ciochetti, ceo of XL
Travel, says while no airlines
have adopted the brandnew
product yet, he would,
without a doubt, encourage
all airlines to implement it.
Dinesh agrees.
“All agencies have been
victims of credit card fraud at
some point,” he says, adding
that the product needs to be
implemented by the entire
airline industry.
The product enhances
Travelport’s existing Card
Payment Gateway by
integrating with ACI’s ReD
Shield platform.
ReD Shield is part of
the UP Payments Risk
Management solution, which
utilises advanced data
analytics, adaptive machine
learning and customer
profiling techniques and
is backed by patented
predictive models and
global fraud intelligence
and supported by a team of
expert risk analysts.
“The major advantage
of combining Travelport
Authorize Plus with ACI ReD
Shield is that we have built
a fully integrated solution,
which applies fraud control
management without the
need for both our airline and
agent customers to do any
major development or change
their workflow process of
today,” says Derek Sharp,
senior vice president and md
of air commerce, Travelport.
Additional features include
dynamic fraud screening
of card payments used to
purchase air tickets via
Travelport-connected agents,
the ability to flag and prevent
ticket issuance and detailed
online management reports
of all transactions and
status.
