Airline credit card payments and specifically what airline product each purchase relates to, are about to get a little more transparent.
The airline industry has changed beyond all recognition since the heady days of Pan-Am or Concorde when a single bundled airfare took care of everything – baggage allowance, allocated seating, in-flight movies, food and drinks. Not so nowadays in the age of nickel and diming and ‘bare fares.’
Even with ancillary transactions increasing 400% since 2008, there was no discernable way to see on a credit card bill what portion of a single transaction related to the base airfare and how much was attributed to add-on services.
That is about to change as Visa recently announced the launch of new ‘ancillary’ transaction categories. This is a timely development as transactions for extra fees now represent about half of the card transactions that airlines process each year.
"Consumers can more easily understand charges on their bill," says Visa global head of merchant solutions Ramon Martin.
"For example, what previously may have read, ‘Airline Air 0014567891014’ would now read ‘Airline Air Wi-Fi.’"
He says it will improve the efficiency of travel expense reconciliation with costs broken down into categories.
It could also likely save business travel departments a lot of money, particularly those that have a defined policy on business travel ‘perks.’
Visa said it has been a ‘multi-year collaboration with the airline industry’ to set the new global payment standards which are based on classifications from the Airline Tariff Publishing Company.
