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As the aviation industry begins its road to recovery, all stakeholders have an active role to play in identifying and implementing sustainable solutions that will support the travel industry’s long-term growth prospects. IATA Financial Gateway (IFG) enables increased travel payment processing flexibility for the world’s airlines and travel suppliers to build a cost-effective travel payment strategy that will help facilitate and accelerate the industry’s recovery in the near term while creating a seamless customer experience.
IATA Financial Gateway (IFG) is an omni-channel payment orchestration and management platform fully dedicated to the travel industry. It has been designed to provide airlines, agents, and all travel suppliers with the ability to manage and control their payment/settlement processes as well as expand payment diversity throughout all distribution channels and touchpoints on the passenger journey.
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Please fill in this form to download an introduction to IFG, IATA’s omni-channel payment orchestration and management platform.
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DRIVING GROWTH THROUGH PAYMENT
As travel suppliers continue to develop and improve their distribution landscape to achieve a global reach, they are also faced with the need to manage a cost-effective payment strategy in each distribution channel to lower their payment costs and at the same time increase their payment acceptance.
New payment methods are proliferating and as travel suppliers move into a retailing approach to provide a seamless customer experience, they must embrace them all and be prepared for other new payment methods on the horizon. Having the capability to accept payment in each distribution channel and at every touchpoint on the passenger journey has become a key success factor for travel suppliers to drive growth and maximize revenue per passenger.
However, the travel payment processing capability remains inconsistent across the distribution channels and limited throughout the passenger journey, leaving room for improvement in regard to travel payment solutions. Every channel has a multitude of payment processes leading to technical complexity and high costs, directly impacting the travel supplier’s profitability.
As an orchestration and management platform, IFG provides the travel industry with the ability to address the complexity by enabling payment orchestration through all channels with a wide range of payment partners worldwide. The payment orchestration platform ensures the consistency, availability, and flexibility to add different payment options across all distribution channels. Through one single connection via IFG, travel suppliers can deploy new forms of payments cost-effectively across their diverse distribution channels and networks, including reporting to the BSP and ARC for agency sales settlement all while improving payment acceptance and providing a seamless customer experience.
See how IFG enables a Seamless Passenger Journey Experience (pdf).
Airlines and travel suppliers can implement IFG in a few different ways depending on their current system landscape and process flow.
As a payment orchestration platform, IFG removes the technical barrier for travel suppliers by integrating the multitude of payment providers, enabling all options travel suppliers to build their omni-channel payment orchestration strategy.
Airlines and travel suppliers have the capability on the IFG User Interface to build a true orchestration strategy by configuring the business rules they want to apply for every type of sale. They have full control and visibility when it comes to selecting the payment processing provider, whether it is for authorization, authentication, fraud prevention, or accepting a new form of payment in a specific channel broadening the payment capabilities within the travel industry.
In addition, IFG also facilitates BSP / ARC reporting, improves security through the latest standards, and, through real-time information capture, provides enhanced risk management capabilities.
IFG creates benefits for the entire travel value chain, including the end customer:
Global Reach
- By providing global coverage, IFG enhances sales opportunities and improves the customer experience.
- Allowing customers to use the payment method of their choice supports a strong sales conversion rate and seamless customer experience.
Simplification
- IFG reduces complexity and increases operational efficiency.
- New forms of payment are easier to implement and accept.
Cost Efficiency
- IFG uses real-time capture services to generate savings through improved management of service level agreements and risks.
- Deploying the BSP settlement in all non-GDS distribution channels cuts agency settlement costs.
Security
- IFG enhances security by ensuring the latest certification and data privacy standards.
- Third-party services include fraud prevention, behavior analytics, and tokenization.
- Business rules management can be implemented according to organizational payment strategies.
Greater Control
- Travel suppliers can take control of which payment methods to accept and when each payment is made.
- Organizations can select or change payment partners without any system disturbances.
With the objective of supporting the airlines’ retailing approach through the different touchpoints of the passenger journey to improve user experience, IFG helps airlines create a seamless payment process for their agency sales channels including NDC.
IFG provides an end-to-end solution as a payment orchestration platform, from agent validation and profile management to the settlement files generation for the BSP and ARC processing.
IFG facilitates BSP / ARC reporting, improves security through the latest standards, and, through real-time information capture, provides enhanced risk management capabilities.
IFG NDC Payment usecase (pdf)
IFG acts as a neutral payment marketplace and welcomes all travel industry players to be part of the unique travel payment marketplace with high exposure and increased scope of product offerings to airlines and other travel suppliers in regards to payment solutions. Payment Service Providers (PSPs), Alternative Forms of Payments (AFOPs), Fraud Prevention providers, Currency Conversion providers, etc. are among some of the key players in the payment space to join the IFG platform to expose their services and provide an array of options for travel suppliers.
All payment providers will have the opportunity to directly expose services to travel suppliers and capture sales from all distribution channels. The go-to-market deployment time is also greatly shortened with IFG, avoiding long and complex onboarding processes with airlines and travel suppliers. This new payment orchestration platform creates the perfect application of travel payment processing for the travel industry.
See the latest press releases with payment providers who have joined the IFG Community:
Worldline
Riskified
Worldpay
UnionPay
2C2P
If you want to know more about IFG and how it will improve your payment processes, please leave us a message via the form below or contact ifg@iata.org.