Tunisair Payment Updates

Effective with sales issued Monday, April 29, 2024 (PED 05/01/24), Tunisair (TU/199) will begin accepting Mastercard and Visa as forms of payment through ARC.


Interactive Agent Reporting (IAR) Scheduled Upgrade

On Thursday, May 9, 2024, ARC will be re-platforming the Interactive Agent Reporting (IAR) tool. The upgrade will occur from 3-6 a.m. EDT. IAR will not be available during this time. 

The new platform will improve stability and allow ARC to make updates to meet your needs more easily. While no functionality is changing with this upgrade, some areas of IAR may look slightly different.

If you have any questions about this change, please contact our Customer Care Center at 855-816-8003 or ccchelp@arccorp.com.


Multifactor Authentication Requirements

Over the past year, there has been an increase in fraud infiltrating the travel industry and affecting travel agencies at an alarmingly high rate. At ARC, we aim to ensure you are equipped with the knowledge necessary to protect yourself from these latest fraud schemes. 

Due to these growing fraud concerns and to comply with the new Payment Card Industry (PCI) 4.0 requirements, ARC will require Multifactor Authentication (MFA) for all account logins if available from your system provider. These provisions are countermeasures against social engineering and phishing attacks intended to collect valid credentials from unsuspecting users for fraudulent purposes.

There are two ways to satisfy the MFA requirement:

  • Use a combination of two or more authentication factors as the system provider requires.

  • Use a single sign-on service (SSO) concurrently with MFA internally in place. With this option, the user gains access through a federated identity management arrangement requiring two or more authentication factors. 

These updated security recommendations are to protect you and your airline partners from the growing sophistication of cyber criminals’ attempts to gain unauthorized access to agency ticketing tools. 

If you have any questions regarding MFA, please contact your System Provider for support.

What is PCI?

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) version 4.0 is a compliance framework intended for entities that store, process or transmit payment account data, entities accepting or processing payment transactions, and for developers and manufacturers of software and devices used in those transactions. The PCI DSS compliance framework comprises a baseline of technical and operational requirements designed to protect cardholder data.


Tip of the Week: Daily Reconciliation of Your IAR Sales Report

ARC strongly recommends reconciling IAR sales reports daily. A final reconciliation should also be performed before sales report authorization/submission. The final net remittance of the report is the amount ARC will draft to or from your bank account.

The following daily IAR sales report checks will facilitate this process:

  • Verify that all documents and voids are correctly listed.

  • Verify that all transactions were legitimately issued by your agency (to guard against unauthorized ticketing).

  • Correct any errors.

  • Verify all commission amounts.

  • Verify that all refund transactions are accurate and that their values include any penalty information or waiver code (if applicable).

  • Verify that all exchange transactions are accurate and that their values include any penalty information or waiver code (if applicable).

  • Verify that all residual value MCOs/EMDs are properly linked to their associated exchange transaction as companion exchanges.

  • Verify that all other companion exchanges (exchanges that involve more than one new document) have all additional new documents correctly linked.

  • Verify any GDS void of a companion exchange transaction has been processed in IAR. IAR rejects void requests of either document once linked into a companion exchange transaction. The void of either document is only allowed when the companion link is manually broken by removing/unhooking the second new document from the transaction within the next business day after issuance.

  • Verify all IAR modifications and voids are completed prior to the expiration of the transaction’s next business day window date.

  • Verify cash and credit totals.

  • Verify the net remit amount.