by Bert Archer
Last updated: 10:10 AM ET, Mon March 3, 2025
The way travel advisors register with and book through airlines is about to change, and for those working with Air Canada, it’s going to change even more.
After a proof of concept was executed on stage at IATA’s World Data Symposium (World Data Symposium), an entirely new – and much simpler – system of agent and agency verification got one step closer to reality thanks to two Montreal Air Canada staffers and a tech CEO who grew up in Beaconsfield.
During a session called Seamless Business Partner Interactions with Digital Identity, Lisa Bourque, senior manager B2B products for Air Canada, Kurt Zuo, an Air Canada product manage, and Mathieu Glaude, CEO of 4sure Technology Solutions, discussed the digital wallet solution they’ve been working on, along with Turkish Airlines, that would transform the way agencies, advisors, and airlines interact.
“The manual authentication process is impacting airlines operations and agency operations, because let's face it,” said Bourque,” it's not very good for an agency to wait seven business days to gain access to a booking platform to book for their customers, and then the airline is missing revenue for those seven days, so not very good from that perspective as well.”
She then passed it over to Hilas Demirtas of Turkish Airlines, who described the “single solution framework for all airlines…. It includes a new, seamless and passwordless login process, and it eliminates the need for OTP (one time password)... reducing the processing time significantly from several days to just a few seconds.”
Then Zuo demonstrated, registering live with three airlines, including Air Canada Connex, in as many minutes.
As Glaude, CEO of the company that’s putting the software together, explained it, “We're building a trust fabric that is applicable to the entire ecosystem.”
He described it as treating identity verification like we already treat email. You can get an email on Gmail, Outlook, wherever. It is platform-agnostic. That’s how this new system would treat agent and agency verification: One thing, instantly transferable to any airline platform.
Glaude’s company is already providing this sort of infrastructure for various provincial governments, including the Quebec government’s system to issue mobile drivers licenses, as well as transactions involving SAAQ.
So where do we go from here? Bourque told TravelPulse Canada, “We’re going to work on that. They’re also going to do another POC to introduce digital identity into the NDC workflow. That will be the next step.” And after that, she hopes, it may go live sometime in 2026.
But Zuo said to expect changes sooner than that at Air Canada Connex. He’s working on a renewal of sorts, set to launch in December, rolling out first to “trusted partners.” According to Zuo, it will be “like for like, so no new features, but a completely new experience.”
So that’s something to look forward to this Christmas.
For more TravelPulse Canada coverage from IATA's first World Data Symposium, please see TravelPulse On-Site: IATA's first World Data Symposium, Day One and Day Two.
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