Cash & Liquidity Management
Published  7 MIN READ

Flying Start: Taming SITA’s Vast and Complex Payments Set-up

As a specialist in air transport communications and information technology, SITA is present in just about every country on the planet. With on-the-ground support for its airline and airport clients an essential part of its service, SITA’s payments infrastructure is necessarily extensive. Determined to bring order to the proceedings, the firm called upon Unifiedpost, and its cloud-based PowertoPay corporate payments hub, for help.

If you’ve ever been to an airport, literally almost any airport, you will have benefited from the presence of SITA. It is the global leader in air transport communications and information technology: what SWIFT is to financial messaging, so SITA is to the air travel industry. Indeed, SWIFT is owned by banks, SITA is owned by airlines and airports – and both enable vital, secure communications between participants.

Like SWIFT, SITA also has the kind of reach of which others can only dream. With services provided to around 200 countries and territories, ‘truly global’ is no exaggeration. But such an expansive reach comes with its own set of challenges, notes Guillermo De La Fuente, Senior Manager at SITA.

With technical services provided to airports and airlines in every corner of the globe, and the nature of air travel and safety being 24/7, remote problem-solving and maintenance of SITA’s systems is not an option. Every location must have its own team ready to respond at a moment’s notice.