What is BSP System ?

The Billing and Settlement Plan is a system designed to facilitate the sale of airline tickets issued by IATA Accredited Agents and to simplify the reporting and remittance (payment) of these transactions to IATA Member and non-IATA airlines.

The Billing and Settlement Plan and its Data Processing Centres (DPCs) make it possible for IATA Accredited Agents to sell air transportation and to report their sales to the BSP participating airlines through the BSP.

The BSP is a system whereby IATA Accredited Agents can sell many airline services and report these sales to each airline through the BSP system.

In general, most merchants pay for their supplier products and services before selling them to consumers.

However, in the case of travel agencies, airline products and services are paid for after they have been re-sold to their travel customers

Here is how the selling of airline services takes place:

·         Customer requires an air transportation service

·         Travel agent offers advice, flights and fares

·         Customer makes a decision to purchase the service

·         Travel agent makes a reservation through a Global Distribution System (GDS) or a Ticketing System Provider (TSP) and issues a ticket

·         Ticket details are sent automatically to the Data Processing Centre (DPC) of the BSP

The BSP Data Processing Centre receives airline ticket sales information from the Global Distribution System or TSP when the ticket is issued by a travel agent. The DPC processes the information to produce a billing report of the tickets sold by the agent for each BSP participating airline.

In the BSP system the agent pays one amount to a central point - IATA BSP.

BSP participating airlines receive one billing report from the IATA BSP, which contains detailed information of each travel Agent's sales for each airline.

• The BSP DPC produces and delivers electronically one sales report (Airline Billing Analysis) for each Participating Airline detailing sales issued by all IATA Accredited Agents.
• The BSP DPC also produces a billing report (Agent Billing Analysis) detailing each ticket transaction issued by the agent for all the BSP participating airlines.