The Settlement with Orders process starts with the Requests for Clearance triggered always by the Offer Responsible Airline (ORA). ORA will most likely be the recipient of funds known as the Clearance Payee, but in some cases, such as payment of commissions on credit card transaction or refunds, ORA would be the Clearance Payer and will perform the remittance step of the process. Due to the dual role that ORA can play the requests is named “Clearance” to accommodate its diverse functionality. The Seller can be either a Clearance Payer or Clearance Payee, too. Therefore, in the model the settlement and remittance business services and related information are always associated with the Payee and the Payer, and not with the Seller and ORA.
It is important to note that the request for clearance triggered by ORA is based on a payment commitment that has been agreed upon earlier by both ORA and the Seller. More importantly this payment commitment is part of an agreement between ORA and the Seller. As part of the payment commitment the retailing partners (Supplier and Retailer) can also agree on the Clearance Data that will be communicated to the Clearance Manager later on. Therefore, there will be two options with regards to the request for clearance triggered by ORA:
Deliver signed Clearance Data that has been agreed at the time of payment commitment. In this case there is no need to provide reference to the underlying agreement and commitment. The Clearance Data with its unique identifier is known to the Clearance Payer and the Clearance Payee at the time of payment commitment.
Deliver Clearance Data that is derived from the underlying agreement and relevant payment commitment that has not been signed. Therefore, reference to the Agreement and the Payment Commitment must be provided.
Because this is purely remittance and settlement process, only the information required to complete the clearance with the optional information to perform the reconciliation is delivered to the Clearance Manager. ORA and the Seller, who own the agreement and its data, can provide, upon request, legal and regulatory information to interested parties.