If you would like to join the Open Payment Alliance, please fill out the form found at the bottom of your screen or visit their micro-site here.

WORKING GROUP NAME 

 Open Payment Alliance

WORKING GROUP CO-CHAIRS

Xavier Ginesta, Chairman, Voxel Group
Dee Thomas, Onyx CenterSource

HEDNA BOARD LIAISON

Mike Carlo, CEO & Founder, XanderPay

VISION STATEMENT

Build an industry-specific B2B community based payment channel which features streamlined execution of complex B2B payment flows, payment method independence, seamless access to Level-3 data, out of the box compliance with present and future standards and regulatory requirements, and plug and play connectivity between the information systems of all industry stakeholders.

MISSION STATEMENT

Travel companies will be able to send payments instructions to the "Payment Specialist" specifying the terms on which payment for a given booking should be executed and it will be the Payment Specialist's responsibility to leverage the network of partners of the OPA in order to guarantee that the money seamlessly flows into the intended recipient's bank account according to the specified payment terms.

IDENTIFIED BUSINESS PROBLEMS

• Massive distribution of payment information (credit card details and card processing rules) through fax and email
  
• Forced transactions, where hotels charge a non-authorized amount above the credit limit of a VCC
• Unexpected card holder DCC fees, when hotels charge a VCC in a currency they are not supposed to
• Breakage ensuing when hotels erroneously charge an amount below the amount they were supposed to charge on a card or when they "forget" to charge a card
• Other manual card processing errors, such as charging bookings to the wrong card, losing the card, etc.
• I nability to leverage emerging forms of payment which may be more cost efficient thatn the existing ones in certain scenarios
• Generation of tax compliant invoices for corporate customers

GROUP OBJECTIVES

The goal of the OPA is to act as a catalyst in the transition from the highly inefficient manner that B2B payments are handled today to a fully streamlined payment infrastructure. This goal has traditionally been attached from the classic approach of defining standards and fostering their industry-wide adoption. The goal of the OPA initiative is to attack the root of the problem of B2B payments mirroring the way disruptive innovation is happening at exponential speed across different industries worldwide: leveraging vast networks of relatively small companies which specialize in specific pieces of a complex value chain and then bundle their services into alliances to collectively disrupt entire industries.

MEETING PLANS

The first meeting will be held in conjunction with the HEDNA Dublin Conference. A meeting schedule will be implemented after the first meeting.

WORKING GROUP COMPOSITION

Technology Participants

• VCC issuers
• Card schemes
• Bank transfer partners
• Payment gateways
• PCI compliance service providers
• Electronic billing service providers
• Forex partners
• Channel managers
• GDSs

Industry Participants

• Hotel groups
• OTAs
• Bedbanks
• TMCs
• DMCs
• Tour operators

DELIVERABLES

The purpose of the OPA is to implement different versions of the Payment Specialist paradigm which cater to the needs of industry-specific verticals (corporate travel, tour operation, OTAs, etc) and start piloting them during 2017. After successful piloting and fine tuning, the final block diagrams of each proposed solution will be released and made publicly available.

FUTURE PLANS

The Co-Chairs and Board Liaisons envision the OPA becoming an ongoing forum.

 OPA MICROSITE

Please see the latest on the OPAs efforts at their working group micro-site here.

Download the full Open Payment Alliance Charter here. If you would like to join the Open Payment Alliance, please fill out the form below: