Some carriers do not accept a form of payment as part of the booking (AirCreateReservationReq/FormOfPayment), and perform ticketing functions outside of electronic or paper tickets. These ticketless carriers may or may not also be an Electronic Payment Carrier, which requires payment at the time of booking. While ticketless carriers can use several ways to accept payment data.
Request
An Air Booking request can be submitted without knowledge of a carrier's Electronic Payment Status. If the carrier is known to be an Electronic Payment Carrier, the EPAY SSR is included in the request, and a Credit Card is included as the FormOfPayment, with the expiration date, if it is known.
Response
An Air Booking response is returned. During Air Booking, Universal API checks if the carrier is an EPAY carrier.
- If the carrier is EPAY, and the FormOfPayment is credit card, an SSR EPAY is created and returned in the response, if one was not included in the request.
- If the carrier is not EPAY, the FormOfPayment is not a credit card, or the FormOfPayment is not provided, an error is returned: Credit Card FOP required to send payment info during Booking for EPAY carrier-XX,YY, where XX, YY are the marketing carriers.
Also if an EPAY carrier is present in the Air Booking, the response contains an informational message: UR includes air reservation comprising of Guaranteed payment carrier - XX,YY, where XX and YY are EPAY carriers.
Any response remarks returned from the supplier are not interpreted by Universal API and are passed along directly in the response.
Note: While most responses from suppliers are returned in a matter of seconds, a supplier has 24 hours to issue a response. If an unconfirmed status (e.g., 'NO' or 'UN') is returned, the travel provider should retrieve the booking at a later time to confirm the supplier's response.
Exceptions
Worldspan
- Worldspan does not support EPAY.
ACH
Most Low Cost Carriers in ACH do not use EPAY.
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