Air Workflow

How to follow best practice when using virtual cards to pay for flights

Virtual cards are a superior payment option over traditional forms of payment such as BSP/ARC, personal, corporate or lodge cards.

Virtual cards:

• provide account holders with centralised billing, secure payment, and rich auto-reconciled data,
• allow travellers to avoid expense claims,
• deliver faster, guaranteed payment to airlines.

Point of Sale considerations

It's important to consider when you need to request the virtual card. Normally this is at the point of booking, requested by an Online Booking Tool (OBT) to instantly pay for NDC/LCC content. However, in some cases where tickets are being issued off a GDS queue, you may need to request the virtual card from your robotic application.

Pricing/Fare quote

In some instances, airlines charge a surcharge on the final price of the ticket, dependent on the card type that is being used. Some points of sale allow you to inquire, using the BIN range of the card (first six digits) to identify how much the flight will cost. You can use the Conferma Platform to retrieve the BIN range for a particular Card Pool. You must provide the two-character airline code (e.g. BA (British Airways) or AA (American Airlines)) to ensure the correct BIN is returned.

Issuing a ticket

Follow the two steps below when paying for a flight to ensure you correctly generate and enrich virtual cards.

Step 1 - Pre-ticketing

Before buying a ticket, create a virtual card. Create one virtual card for each ticket you generate. Do not use a single virtual card to pay for different tickets.

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One virtual card per ticket

It is very important that you request a single virtual card for each ticket created, rather than a single virtual card to pay for multiple tickets.

This ensures:

• Accurate data—specific supplier and purchase data.
• Secure payment—reduce the exposure of the card number.
• You can avoid a supplier over-charging the same virtual card, and blocking other payments.

When requesting a virtual card to pay for flights, you should use the Air deployment type.

The Air deployment type will require you to provide the following key elements, in addition to the standard data fields required to generate a virtual card:

• Validating Airline Code—set the Supplier ID value to the two-character airline code that will charge the card.
• Validating Airline Name—set the Supplier Name to the name of the airline.
• Routing—ensure you submit the route of the flight, including the flight number, departure airport + time, arrival airport + time, and cabin class.
• Traveller email—ensure the traveller's email address is present so they can access the booking via the Conferma App.

Providing this enriched data at deployment helps customers and partners confidently review their payment data.

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Keep the virtual card open

To ensure you can continue to modify the virtual card, set the card deactivation date to the date of the last leg of arrival. If the card passes its deactivation date, you will not be able to update the virtual card.

The card will be blocked from further authorisations as the airline will charge the card's assigned credit limit.

Dependent on the card scheme, virtual cards have a three or four-digit security (CVV) that you can use to support your purchase. This may be required for non-GDS ticket issuance.

Once the virtual card is returned, store the Deployment ID locally in your system.

Use the virtual card's Scheme Code (VI, CA, AX), PAN, Expiry Date, Security Code and Card Holder Name in the standard credit card fields when making a purchase with the airline.

Step 2 - Post-ticketing

After successfully purchasing a ticket, you will receive a booking confirmation code or 13 digit ticket number from the airline, which can be submitted as a Supplier Reference. This information must be updated against the virtual card in the Conferma platform. If a PNR Locator is generated, this should also be submitted to Conferma.

If the ticket purchase is unsuccessful, update the status of the virtual card to FailedWithSupplier. This indicates that the card was submitted to the supplier but is not expected to be charged.

Modifying/exchanging a ticket

When you modify an existing ticket (booking), it is important to update the virtual card you used during the initial ticketing process to reflect the new ticket details, such as price, routing and custom data fields.

Price Increase (Add Collection)

If the price of the ticket increases due to the changes, update the virtual card and increase the credit limit on the virtual card.

Price Decrease

If the price of the ticket decreases due to the changes, do not lower the credit limit on the card.

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You must not re-use a virtual card for another supplier

If you have previously purchased a ticket with a virtual card from Airline A, and the traveller now wishes to take a different flight with Airline B, you must not re-use the same virtual card to pay for Airline B. Cancel/void the original ticket, and create a new virtual card to pay for the new ticket.

Cancelling/voiding tickets

If a flight is cancelled, update the virtual card with the status CancelledWithSupplier. This ensures the customer's reporting is correct.

Ancillaries

If you are purchasing a ticket with ancillaries, you can also include these when requesting a virtual card. Each ancillary can be detailed, such as baggage or extra leg room, and the cost of the individual ancillary will be added to the total card amount specified. For instance, if you request a virtual card for £100, and an extra bag for £10, the total credit limit Conferma applies to the virtual card is £110.