Sabre, Amadeus Team For Payment Play

Sabre and Amadeus last week officially launched its Moneydirect non-air payment joint venture, following European Commission approval.

The global distribution competitors last month said they partnered to focus on automating multi-GDS payment, processing, clearing and reconciliation for non-air segments, including hotel, rental car and rail.

"There are various forms of payment mechanisms for non-air processing, most notably the manual process associated with payment via check," Moneydirect CEO and general manager James Filsinger said. "There really is no true industry standard for the non-ARC, non-bank settlement plan type travel product for payment processing." Filsinger noted the system is GDS-agnostic, and also can work through other channels.

Moneydirect already has been active as an Amadeus Australia-owned business operating in Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines, where roughly 6,000 clients process about $2 billion in annual transactions, the company said. The new joint venture, however, last week went live as a "global, cross-border, cross-currency" payment and settlement platform, Filsinger said. He said Moneydirect has further functionality developments in the pipeline. Filsinger said much of the focus would be in North America and Europe, but the company would not disclose revenue or transaction targets. "Without going into too much detail, we have a very detailed development plan and prioritization plan based on customer feedback," Filsinger said. "We'll be running immediately since it's based on an existing solution."

The companies are making the platform available both for leisure and corporate travel agency channels, as well as non-air travel suppliers, for bidirectional payments. Customers can set up an account to submit, collect, authorize, monitor and report on such payments as travel agency commissions or direct settlements. Filsinger said Moneydirect charges on a transaction basis, ranging between 10 cents and a "couple of dollars," largely dependent on the complexity of the transaction.

Sabre and Amadeus hold a 50-50 stake in the joint venture, which is headquartered in Ireland and has subsidiaries in the United States and Australia.

The European Commission reviewed the joint venture and last week granted approval. "Given the limited size and scope of Moneydirect's business, the fact that this business is not closely related to the parties' GDS business and the fact that Amadeus and Sabre have put in place structures to limit the information flows between Moneydirect and its parent companies, the Commission concluded that the proposed transaction would not risk impeding effective competition," the European Commission stated.