Simplify airline-travel agent financial relations

Global air travel is a complex business with hundreds of airlines and tens of thousands of agents, in hundreds of countries. Without the BSP, tracking and managing sales of air tickets and the financial transactions associated with them would be almost impossible. A truly worldwide system, the BSP is designed to facilitate and simplify financial transactions between IATA-accredited Passenger Sales Agents and BSP airlines, as well as help them improve financial control and efficiency, enhanced by IATA BSPlink.

BSP value proposition for NDC

Manage your network from a single place

IATA’s BSP spans 207+ countries and territories, and currently serves over 59,000 of the world’s largest travel brands, including over 400 airlines worldwide, with an on-time settlement rate of 99.999%. In 2023, it processed over $240 billion.

With the BSP, you can:

  • Access the most cost-effective settlement platform with a $0 fee for processing and settling transactions in 2024 to IATA Members.
  • Manage selling, reporting and payments with your BSP partners in a single process – agents issue one sales report and remit one amount to a central point; airlines receive one settlement covering all agents.
  • Monitor centrally your credit card consents and setup and access to a central production and distribution of card remittance files.
  • Centralize all your payment and revenue-related information and processes.
  • Access consolidated reporting and features through BSPlink, our web-based software to:
    • Easily and efficiently get all the information and tools you need to optimize your back-office processes (administer ADMs, ACMs, Refunds from one tool).
    • Centralize management of your ticketing authority
    • Access billing details, sales data form local or global reporting
    • Enjoy access to API facilities.

To learn more about our BSPlink plans, download our brochures or access FAQs on the IATA Customer Portal.

Control payment in airline retailing

As airlines shift towards the sale of added-value products and services through the New Distribution Capability (NDC), IATA’s BSP provides the ideal framework for NDC sales with additional specific benefits, which enables you to:

  • Limit efforts and risks associated to bilateral agreements and its post sales disputes management
  • Maintain financial control and manage risk on real-time transactions – Our APIs enable the checks and balances that counter fraud and ensure collection.
  • Limit credit card fraud – Card processing provides upfront information on authorized forms of payment and PCI DSS compliance.
  • Streamline and accelerate NDC implementation – The IATA Financial Gateway (IFG) provides additional orchestration and integration with the IATA BSP. It also offers IFG APIs service to support upfront validation and real-time transactions control.

Find out all about BSP value proposition for NDC sales. 

Get to know more about Modern Airline Retailing and NDC.

Continuously improve financial efficiency

IATA’s BSP ensure the overall process monitoring in a neutral manner and gives you a solid foundation:

  • Increase financial control – The BSP centralizes and groups information, performs numerous data quality controls to eliminate risks of settlement errors, automate validation of billing and settlement based on industry standards and local requirements, and accompany your airlines for a fast and safe settlement of your air ticket sales: 99.999% on time settlement via BSP secured platform.
  • Realize cost savings – The BSP requires less resources for billing and collection/remittance, enabling you to use them for more value-added tasks.
    A very cost-effective service, with an unit price transparently established and monitored under the IATA Settlement Systems Governance, and highly competing with any cash payment or B2B solutions.
  • Improve cashflow – BSP processes improve and control the cash flow between Airlines and Travel Agents by streamlining the process of collecting and distributing payments.
  • Improve your financial control and decision making – BSP provides its participants daily and billing outputs on reported sales, in an Industry standard format accessible to most ERP systems.   Valuable inputs and services are also centralized and accessible to airlines through the BSPlink web-enabled platform to facilitate their daily controls of back-office operations, financial impacts and fast track decision making.

Meet your objectives

Start simply, and continuously improve your efficiency:

  • Join a BSP – Participation in a BSP is open to:
    • All airlines (IATA members and non-members) serving the country or area concerned,
    • All IATA-accredited travel agents in the BSP country of operation.
    • General Sales Agents (GSA) and Airport Handling Agents (AHAs), which may be nominated to participate by the airline they represent and subject to the airline entering into a standard agreement.
  • To obtain the local participation criteria and conditions, please contact the customer service for your region.
  • As a BSP participants, get your access to BSPlink or manage your existing subscription? Access BSPlink with your single sign on through the IATA Customer Portal.