Overview - Airline Acquiring

Airline Acquiring lets you send airline booking data (itinerary, passengers and ticket details) with your N-Genius Online card payments, and settle a booking in several partial captures, for example one capture per passenger. This is known as multi-clearing.

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Availability
Airline Acquiring must be enabled on your outlet before you can use it. Contact your Network International relationship manager to request activation. If it is not enabled, the gateway still accepts your orders but ignores the airline data without returning an error.

What you can do

Capability	What it gives you
Send booking data	Attach `airlineDetails` (booking reference, itinerary, passengers, ticket, taxes and fees) when you create an order. The data is used for the authorisation or sale and for every capture.
Multi-clearing captures	Settle an authorised amount in several partial captures. Each capture carries its position in the set (for example 02 of 03) and whether more captures will follow.
Per-passenger settlement	Put a different ticket number and passenger name on each capture, so a multi-passenger booking can be settled one passenger at a time.
Standard post-payment operations	Reverse an authorisation, void a capture, and refund a capture or a purchase. You do not resend airline data for these.

Who this is for

Airlines, travel agencies and ticketing platforms that take card payments through N-Genius Online and need to pass airline-specific data, or settle multi-passenger bookings in separate clearings. This guide is written for the developers who integrate the payment flow and the product owners who plan it.

How it works

sequenceDiagram
    participant M as Merchant server
    participant N as N-Genius API
    participant C as Customer
    M->>N: Create order (action AUTH + airlineDetails)
    N-->>M: 201 order (orderRef, paymentRef, payment page link)
    M->>C: Redirect to payment page (or collect card via direct API)
    C->>N: Enters card details
    N-->>M: Payment AUTHORISED
    loop For each passenger / clearing
        M->>N: Capture (amount + airline: seq, count, M/F)
        N-->>M: PARTIALLY_CAPTURED (or CAPTURED)
    end
    opt After the event
        M->>N: Refund a capture / void
    end

Authenticate. Request a short-lived access token with your API key.
Create the order. Send the standard order fields plus airlineDetails. Save the orderRef and paymentRef from the response.
Take the card payment. Redirect the customer to the hosted payment page (recommended) or use the direct card API.
Capture. On an AUTH order, send one capture per passenger or ticket. Each capture includes an airline object with its clearing position. Use F on the final capture.
Manage changes. Reverse the authorisation if nothing is captured, void a capture the same day, or refund a capture after settlement.

Choose your order action

Action	Use it when	Multi-clearing captures
`AUTH`	You settle the booking later in one or more captures. Choose this for multi-passenger or multi-clearing bookings.	Yes
`PURCHASE`	You charge and settle the whole amount at once.	No. The payment is captured automatically, so there is no capture step.

Key rules at a glance

Airline data is accepted on single (one-time) orders only. Recurring and subscription orders are rejected.
When airlineDetails is present, only card payment methods are offered. Alternative payment methods are hidden.
Every field in airlineDetails is optional, but each field you send must pass its validation rule.
A booking can contain up to 13 passengers and 9 flight legs.
The capture airline object applies to partial captures only. It is ignored on a full capture.
Refunds, voids and reversals use the original transaction. Do not resend airline data.

What changes in the API

Two operations accept new airline objects. Everything else is a standard N-Genius Online operation and is unchanged.

Operation	Endpoint	New object
Create order	`POST /transactions/outlets/{outletRef}/orders`	`airlineDetails`
Capture	`POST /transactions/outlets/{outletRef}/orders/{orderRef}/payments/{paymentRef}/captures`	`airline`

Before you begin

Airline Acquiring is enabled on your outlet (confirm with your relationship manager).
You have your API key and outlet reference from the N-Genius portal.
You can call the Sandbox environment (https://api-gateway.sandbox.ngenius-payments.com) from your server.
You keep the API key and access tokens on your server only.

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Test faster with Postman
A Postman collection and Sandbox environment are provided with the integration guide. They run the full flow, including captures, refunds and negative tests.

Next steps

Go to	You will find
Integration guide	Authentication, endpoints, sample requests and responses, captures, refunds, flow examples and the Postman collection
Field reference	Every `airlineDetails` and capture `airline` field, with length, format and allowed values
Errors and exceptions	Exception scenarios, error codes and how to resolve them