2021 ARC Agency Pricing
The COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect organizations throughout the travel industry including ARC and its travel agency customers. Due to the significant adverse impact the pandemic is having on air travel transaction volumes, ARC is adjusting both its annual travel agency location fee and quarterly transaction fees to ensure the continued reliability of ARC’s settlement system for the global air travel community. These changes have been approved by representative organizations of the ARC Joint Advisory Board-Agent Reporting Agreement (JAB-ARA) and by the ARC Board of Directors. In 2021, ARC will also revert its Ticket Resolution Service (TRS) fee grace period back to the standard schedule.
Lastly, ARC is making two minor updates to both the Agent Reporting Agreement (ARA) and Corporate Travel Department Reporting Agreement (CTDRA), which have also been approved by JAB-ARA and the ARC Board of Directors.
2021 Annual Travel Agency Location Fee
A 2021 annual travel agency location fee of $304 will be collected for each of your travel agency’s locations via electronic draft from your designated bank account on January 21, 2021. A full listing of 2021 fees can be found here. A separate draft will be issued for each active agency location on record as of January 3, 2021. For consolidated drafting agencies, only one draft will be assessed for all ARC-accredited locations.
In the event your agency is going through a bank account change or will be opting to voluntarily delete or change participation program, these updates will need to be completed by January 7, 2021. Bank account changes can be made with ARC’s accreditation tool in My ARC or by contacting ARC’s Customer Care Center (CCC) at 855-816-8003 or ccchelp@arccorp.com.
2021 Quarterly Transaction Fees
The 2021 quarterly transaction fees will only be applied to travel agencies who process 1,000 or more transactions in a particular quarter. The 2021 fee schedule is outlined below and can be found here.
|
Transactions per Quarter |
Price per Transaction (US$) |
Tier 1 |
1,000 – 2,224,999 |
$0.025 |
Tier 2 |
2.224 – 5.999M |
$0.023 |
Tier 3 |
6M or more |
$0.021 |
Travel agencies will be notified prior to each quarterly draft. For consolidated drafting agencies, only one draft will be assessed for all ARC-accredited locations.
TRS Fee Grace Period Updates
In April 2020, ARC extended the TRS compensatory fee grace period from 15 days to 45 days. ARC’s aim was to provide travel agencies and airlines more time to easily resolve open debit memos during a highly volatile and challenging time period.
Beginning with memos loaded on January 1, 2021, ARC is reverting the TRS compensatory fee grace period back to 15 days, at which point any open TRS debit memos will be charged a $55 fee. ARC is taking this step after careful analysis of current TRS debit memo trends.
Updates to ARA and CTDRA Coming January 4
ARC is making two minor updates to the ARA and CTDRA. To view a summary of the ARA changes, please click here and for a full review of these changes, please click here. To view a summary of the CTDRA changes, please click here and for a full review of these changes, please click here.
ARA and CTDRA changes will become effective January 4, 2021.
Please note that in accordance with Section 5 of the ARA, your continued participation with ARC after January 4, 2021, serves as your acceptance of the amendments.
Planned My ARC System Maintenance on December 6
My ARC, including all tools and products, will be unavailable on Sunday, December 6, 2020, from 3 a.m. until 6 a.m. EST. During this time, you will be unable to access My ARC, including Memo Manager and IAR.
Full system outages are required to perform crucial system maintenance and software updates.
We realize that any system outage may be an inconvenience, but ARC is committed to providing a safe and secure operating environment. The Sunday date and early morning hours were purposely selected to minimize the impact to most My ARC users. Your understanding and patience are appreciated as we improve and upgrade ARC’s systems. Please share this information with others in your organization that may be impacted.
Changes to ARC’s Weekly Cash Disbursement and Refund Processes
As announced via email to ARC’s travel agency customers on October 29, 2020, ARC has been informed by its settlement processor bank, U.S. Bank, that all ACH debits must be secured by the bank prior to being disbursed as part of the ACH process. U.S. Bank has taken this position as part of its own risk mitigation practices associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. As such, ARC is required to make updates to its settlement calendar until further notice. ARC’s primary objective in this instance is to provide an equitable solution for the market and ensure airline and travel agency customers will continue to receive any funds they are owed as soon as possible.
To comply with the bank’s requirements, ARC will require all airlines to wire any funds owed and process cash debits from its travel agency customers on the Friday following the end of the sales week (five days after the period ending date, or PED+5). ARC will then process wires to its airlines and credits to its travel agency customers the following Wednesday (PED+10). These changes will go into effect beginning PED 11/08/2020. When banking holidays fall on a Friday or Monday, this schedule will adjust slightly. A visualization of the new calendar, including holiday scenarios, is available here.
For the travel agency community, this means customers who authorize a weekly sales report with a cash debit balance will be drafted five days after the close of the sales week (Friday), whereas customers who authorize a weekly sales report with a cash credit balance will disbursed funds 10 days after the close of the sales week (the following Wednesday).
Please note:
- These changes apply to ARC cash settlement transactions, including ARC Pay.
- These changes do not affect credit card transactions.
A list of FAQs is available here. If you have any questions, please contact ARC’s Customer Care Center at ccchelp@arccorp.com.
Tip of the Week: Why Was My ARC Account Deleted?
Any My ARC account with access to ARC tools containing sensitive data (including Accreditation, Agent's Choice, Document Ordering System, Document Retrieval Service, IAR, and Memo Manager) is automatically deleted after 150 days of no activity for your data protection.
Payment Card Industry (PCI) security standards require that you access your account and change your password every 90 days when you have access to sensitive data. A My ARC account with access to sensitive data and with no login attempts will go through the following statuses before it is automatically deleted (a reminder email is sent to you before each status change):
- 90 Days (Inactive status) – Access is locked.
- 120 Days (Suspended status) – Access is locked and suspended.
- 150 Days (Deleted status) – The account is automatically deleted.
If you do not have access to any ARC tools that contain sensitive data, your My ARC password will never expire, and your account will never be automatically deleted. However, it is strongly recommended that all My ARC users log in at least once a month to maintain an active account status.
If you are unable to access your My ARC account for any reason, you may attempt to reset your password by clicking the Reset a Forgotten Password link found on My ARC.
If your account has been suspended or deleted, please contact your administrator to restore access. If you do not know who the administrator is, please click on the Find Your Administrator link found on My ARC.