The International Air Transport Association estimates that 4.1 billion airline passengers boarded 42 million flights in 2017. Yet of the $7 billion collected to process payments during the year, fraud cost the travel industry nearly $1 billion, which IATA attributes in large part to increased fraudulent usage of stolen, compromised or fake credit card details in the purchase of airline tickets.
To combat this growing fraud epidemic, the IATA formed the Payment Method Working Group to tackle industry-wide fraud. In the initial phase, the group has focused on card-not-present fraud, which impacts not only airlines, but also travel agents and other travel providers.
Collaboration is key
Travel commerce platform Travelport recently collaborated with electronic payment provider ACI Worldwide to launch Travelport Authorize Plus, an intelligent fraud control and settlement solution for its airline customers. The enhancement integrates ACI’s ReD Shield platform, an essential piece in the ACI UP Payments Risk Management solution, to deliver real-time, cloud-based multi-tiered fraud prevention to Travelport clients.
Solutions to fraud are critical at this juncture in the travel industry, which is expected to continue to boom. The IATA projected that 7.8 billion passengers will travel globally in 2036, and 1.1 billion of those passengers will originate in the U.S. market.