Credit Card payments on BSP Tickets:
IATA Travel Agents reporting through the BSP (Billing and Settlement Plan) can issue ticket on credit cards, if they know that the Airline in question can process this and has valid merchant agreements for the card type.
Since Airlines can hold a valid merchant agreement and handle their credit card reconciliation using their reporting files and not have the merchant information entered in the BSP processing software, IATA Nordic & Baltic will no longer provide a list of Airlines with valid agreements.
Resolution 890 holds the procedure for Credit Card Procedures, and Agents should contact the Airline directly if in doubt of credit card acceptance or not. It is the Agents obligation to know this before issuing credit card transactions through the BSP.
Important note. Credit Card transactions that are rejected at BSP validations due to the agent data entry error are reported as sold ticket but the data is not reported to the Credit Card Companies due to errors. As such the airlines will not be able to get payment for those. The agents and the airlines will have those transactions shown on the RET load Error Report as BC ( Billing Critical) but not as deleted.
The typical agent error can be:
- Credit Card number not correct - wrong number of digits or digits mixed up
- Expiry date passed
- Wrong credit card type ( normally error in CC card code. VI, DC, CA, AX)