Travellers today increasingly look to travel agencies to help them search for and book travel on low-cost carriers.

This demand is driving the need for platforms such as Ypsilon as they aggregate low-cost content for agents and help them pay the airlines in new, more flexible ways.

To simplify agent payments to low-cost carriers, Ypsilon has integrated Amadeus’ business-to-business Wallet Solution within its booking platform so agents can pay for a wide range of fares according to their unique business strategy.

With low-cost carriers representing approximately a quarter of total seats flown in Ypsilon’s key European markets the company needed to offer its online travel agency and agency customers a convenient and flexible means to pay the airlines.

By integrating Amadeus’ Wallet solution, agents can now automatically generate a virtual card quickly and simply within the Ypsilon booking flow.

Each virtual card can be unique to an individual booking making reconciliation simple while reducing fraud.

The new integration will provide Ypsilon’s agency customers with the widest possible choice of business-to-business Wallet payment options including credit, debit and pre-paid options.

This means agencies can tailor payments to their specific business by for example, prioritising cashflow or opting for the lowest cost approach.

The flexibility to choose from a wide range of virtual payment cards also means agents can pay low-cost carriers according to the airline’s preferred methods helping them to optimise cashflow, reduce the cost of payments and to earn rebates.

Bart Tompkins, managing director, payments, Amadeus, commented: “Our mission is to make our flexible payment technology available wherever agents need to pay suppliers, reducing the cost, complexity and friction faced by the industry.

“The integration with Ypsilon represents an important milestone with agents now able to pay all types of airlines easily.”