Funding ticket sales through an IATA EASY PAY wallet
How a travel agency should record money it loads into an IATA EASY PAY wallet, the tickets paid from it, and the monthly check on the wallet balance.
By Achekam · · 5 min read · For Travel businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
The agency's bookkeeper sees a large transfer to IATA on the bank statement in the middle of the month, well before any BSP remittance is due. Nobody has coded it. Was it a payment for tickets? A deposit? A fee? The travel consultant who made it explains that it was a top-up of the EASY PAY wallet, so that tickets could be issued that week. From the books' point of view, though, the money has simply vanished.
Prepaid wallets are easy to use and easy to lose track of. Money goes in as one large transfer and comes out ticket by ticket, often recorded somewhere other than the accounting system. This article explains what IATA EASY PAY is, how it sits beside the regular BSP remittance, and a simple way to keep the wallet visible in the books.
What IATA EASY PAY is
IATA lists EASY PAY among the services its Billing and Settlement Plan gives travel agents, and describes it as a "pay-as-you-go" e-wallet for ticket settlement. The other BSP services IATA lists alongside it are BSPLink for billing and reporting, Travel Agent Service Fees (TASF) for collecting and settling service fees, and BSP data and reports. IATA's Billing and Settlement Plan page is the starting point for the details, including how EASY PAY is set up and used in your market.
The phrase that matters for the books is "pay-as-you-go". Money is put into the wallet first and used as tickets are paid for. That makes the wallet an asset of the agency, like a bank account held with a different institution, until the money in it is spent.
How it sits beside the BSP remittance
IATA describes the BSP as a standardised global framework for sales reporting, remittance and settlement between airlines and travel agents, open only to agents holding IATA accreditation. Under it, each agent makes one sales report and one remittance per period, and each airline receives one consolidated settlement.
The wallet works on a different rhythm. Instead of tickets building up into a remittance that is paid after the period, money is loaded before tickets are paid for. For the books, that means two kinds of ticket payment can exist side by side:
| Regular BSP remittance | EASY PAY wallet | |
|---|---|---|
| When money leaves the bank | When the period's remittance is paid | When the wallet is topped up |
| What the bank line represents | Settlement of the period's tickets, net of refunds and memos | Money moved into the wallet, not yet spent |
| Where the ticket cost is recorded | Against the BSP control account | Against the wallet, as each ticket is paid |
Check how your BSP reports show tickets paid through the wallet, so that you do not count the same ticket in both places.
Treating the wallet as its own asset account
In Achekam, each business has its own double-entry ledger with a standard chart of accounts, and accounts can be added, renamed or switched off. Add an asset account called "IATA EASY PAY wallet", agreed with your accountant and placed with your bank and cash accounts. If you hold wallets in more than one currency, add one account per wallet.
From then on, the wallet account should always show the money sitting in the wallet according to your books. That figure is what you will check against IATA's own records.
Recording top-ups and ticket spend
Top-ups from the bank
A top-up moves money from your bank account into the wallet. It is not an expense and not a payment to an airline. When the bank statement is imported, the top-up appears as a bank line. In Achekam, bank lines are matched by suggestion and a person accepts each match, and a line not yet in the books becomes a suggested journal a person approves. Approve it as a transfer: debit the wallet account, credit the bank account.
Tickets paid from the wallet
Each ticket paid from the wallet reduces the wallet balance. Record that spend by manual journal, from IATA's wallet transactions or your BSP reports: credit the wallet account, and debit whichever account your agency uses for ticket costs or amounts owed to airlines. A business can post manual journals in Achekam; an unbalanced journal, or one dated in a closed month, is refused, and a posted journal is corrected only by a reversal.
Busy agencies may prefer one journal per day or per week, totalling the wallet transactions for that period, rather than one per ticket. Either works, as long as the journal narration identifies the period and the source report, so it can be traced later.
Refunds back into the wallet
If a refunded ticket's money comes back to the wallet, record the reverse: debit the wallet account and credit the account that was charged when the ticket was paid.
Checking the wallet balance each month
At each month end, compare two figures: the wallet account's balance in your books, and the wallet balance shown in IATA's records on the same date. The trial balance shows each account at a date, and the general ledger lists every posted line behind it, so you can see every top-up and every ticket journal that makes up the balance.
If the two figures match, the wallet is fully accounted for. If they do not, the usual causes are:
- a top-up still in transit between the bank and the wallet at month end;
- tickets paid from the wallet in the last days of the month and not yet journaled;
- a refund credited to the wallet and not yet recorded;
- a fee or adjustment on the wallet you have not yet seen.
List each difference, clear it in the next month, and keep the month-end comparison with the journals as support. If your wallet or tickets are in US dollars while your books are in rand, naira or shillings, the exchange rate adds another reconciling item; running a US dollar bank account covers that side. For the rest of the BSP settlement, see reconciling BSP reports, remittances and memos.
Start with the next top-up
Create the wallet account now, and record the next top-up as a transfer the day it appears on the bank statement. Once the first month's balance agrees with IATA's figure, keeping it that way is a short monthly check.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
