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Travel Payment 101:
Data Aggregation & Reconciliation

The ability to access and analyze real-time payment information is vital to success in any business. But in certain sectors, including the travel industry, the volume of transactions, the complexity of the data associated with those transactions, and the need to capture data from a variety of sources can be a logistical nightmare. This can make reconciliation processes difficult, and data aggregation a challenge.

Fortunately, airlines and travel merchants can turn to Payment Orchestration to help gather and organize payment data. This enables them to generate the insights necessary to smooth reconciliation, reduce the cost associated with transaction data management, and boost operational efficiency.

What is Payment Reconciliation?

Payment reconciliation represents a foundational financial discipline that encompasses the systematic alignment and verification of transaction data to ensure that monetary exchanges consistently reflect entries documented in an organization's ledgers or financial repositories. This is essential for validating transactional accuracy, mitigating discrepancy risks, and preserving the structural integrity of financial intelligence assets. Reconciliation is also important for maintaining compliance, identifying and reducing fraud, and improving cash flow.

It can also be a costly process, if done inefficiently. For example, performance constraints within reconciliation systems can represent as much as 15-20% of financial department resource allocations, diverting critical assets from strategic priorities and undermining productivity outcomes. Traditional manual approaches intensify these limitations, with manual processing costing upwards of 30-40% more than automated payment reconciliation solutions.

Defining Reconciliation

What is Data Aggregation?

Reconciliation is a data-led process, but it is only one aspect of the data aggregation that most airlines and travel merchants must perform regularly.

Data aggregation functions as a strategic capability through which airlines and travel merchants consolidate information resources from multiple operational sources. By integrating data streams from passenger records, cargo systems, flight networks, customer feedback channels, satisfaction measurements, and booking platforms, carriers develop improved market understanding and customer insights.

This intelligence foundation supports critical decision frameworks from consumer behavior analysis to revenue optimization strategies to dynamic pricing.

There are three steps in the data aggregation process:

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- Raw data is extracted from one or multiple sources.
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- The extracted data is processed within a database, aggregation software, or middleware to get rid of duplicates and inaccurate data. At this point, various functions provide the requested result.
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- Presentation is the final step, displaying the results in a convenient and understandable format.

Data aggregation is only becoming more important to airlines and travel merchants in the era of Offer-Order-Settlement-Delivery (OOSD). This modern retailing framework depends on accurate and efficient data collection and management to inform personalization, bundling, and bespoke offer strategies that represent the greatest revenue potential from the transition to OOSD.

Tackling Reconciliation and Data Aggregation

Despite data’s importance, without proper organization, segmentation, and understanding, it’s essentially useless.

The problem for many merchants with omnichannel sales and distribution processes – like airlines and other travel merchants – is that multiple channels exponentially increase the amount of data available to analyze. Combined with the variety of financial data sources (including acquiring and issuing banks, credit card platforms and networks, and other payment gateways or processors, all integral to travel transactions), this can quickly become unwieldy for traditional or manual systems.

How Payment Orchestration Helps

This is where Payment Orchestration can have a significant positive impact. Centralized transaction reconciliation and payment settlement are key principles of Payment Orchestration. A Payment Orchestration Platform (POP) acts as a central hub for all payment methods and providers, making it easier for merchants to monitor the entire payment ecosystem and manage consolidated transaction reports from every sales channel.

Our recently relaunched Payment Orchestration Platform is a great example of how data visibility streamlines aggregation and reconciliation.

Key features include:

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- A real-time dashboard that provides instant access to payment data across all digital channels, enabling users to monitor transactions as they happen.
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- Customized reporting, allowing users to define and automatically receive tailored reports with key KPIs and payment data segmented by market, channel, provider, method, and transaction type.
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- Advanced performance insights that help airlines and travel merchants reduce costs, increase acceptance rates, and streamline operations through automated reconciliation.
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- Built-in fraud prevention tools that use data intelligence to detect discrepancies, flag potential chargebacks, and identify fraudulent activity before it occurs.

Reconciliation and data aggregation are central functions of any merchant’s payment ecosystem. To perform these functions efficiently, and to achieve payment optimization, Payment Orchestration is the data-centric solution you need.

Boost Revenue and Simplify Operations with our Payment Orchestration Platform

Our Payment Orchestration Platform helps you meet the challenges and seize the opportunities of a complex global payment landscape. Our experts can help you implement progressive payment strategies that positively impact profitability, enhance your customer experience, and improve operational efficiency.

Request a demo today to learn how our platform and our expertise can help optimize your payment systems.