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NDC adoption won’t scale with technology alone. It will scale when airlines, sellers, and buyers pull in the same direction. Our recent LinkedIn poll confirmed this: 57% of industry peers said collaboration—not just tools or training—will make the biggest difference.
This reinforces an important truth: NDC adoption requires more than technical readiness. It requires airlines, travel sellers, technology providers, and corporate buyers to work together toward shared goals, with aligned timelines, transparent data, and collective problem-solving.
Lessons from Payments: How Collaboration Transformed an Industry
Before chip, PIN, and tap were ubiquitous, payments were fragmented. Networks, issuers, acquirers, and merchants all spoke slightly different dialects. Collaboration changed that: common standards, clear certification, and a shared language for transactions unlocked global scale. The effects were profound:
- Interoperability: Cards worked anywhere.
- Reduce disputes: Shared definitions cut ambiguity.
- Unlock innovation: With the base in place, wallets, tokenization, and contactless scaled quickly.
Airline retailing is at a similar moment. NDC will scale when we align on how readiness is defined, measured, and communicated—together.
What NDC Can Copy from Payments
- Common Standards Governance – In payments, Europay, Mastercard, and Visa (EMV) aligned the ecosystem around shared rules. In airline retailing, we already have a strong foundation through the IATA NDC schemas and Airline Retailing standards. The opportunity now is to broaden participation: airlines, sellers, tech providers and buyers should actively contribute to IATA working groups so that real-world adoption challenges (e.g., servicing flows, disruption handling) are solved at an industry wide level.
Payoff: fewer bespoke builds; faster time to value. - Certification & Readiness Tiers – Payments scaled because merchants and issuers could instantly recognize which cards and terminals were “chip & PIN ready.” NDC needs the same clarity. Defining readiness tiers (e.g., Entry, Advanced, Full Service) would let buyers and sellers know at a glance what an airline API can support — reducing friction and accelerating onboarding.
Payoff: instant expectation-setting for servicing. - Shared Metrics & Common Definitions|Capability Map (AltexSoft) — Just as payments relies on common definitions, NDC also needs a shared language for terms like “booking,” “content parity,” and “servicing completeness.” For a neutral, time-stamped view of what’s supported today, we point to AltexSoft’s NDC Airlines & Retailing Capabilities infographic, which organizes IATA ARM verifications across six streams (Shop, Order, Pay, Settle, Account, Setup). We use this capability map to validate capability richness and flag gaps—especially in servicing—so partners know what’s ready and where collaboration industry alignment is most needed.
Payoff: like-for-like benchmarking; fewer debates
NDC FastTrack: Turning Collaboration into Action
This is why we launched NDC FastTrack—to align the ecosystem on what to build, show what’s ready, and deliver repeatable tools so NDC adoption becomes faster, clearer, and lower-risk.
- Standards participation: Broaden engagement in IATA working groups; translate real-world pain points into implementation guides and readiness checklists adopted across participants.
- Readiness tiers: Create transparency on supported capabilities with clear readiness, externally understandable tiers, mapped to real servicing use cases.
- Enablement at scale: Combine working sessions with reusable artifacts—templates, reference flows, job aids—to make rollouts repeatable across markets and partners.
The Way Forward
The poll results are a clear call to action: we need to double down on collaboration if we want to unlock NDC at scale. Just as payments proved, when industries rally around common goals, the outcome isn’t just efficiency, it’s a new playing field for innovation and value creation.
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