Amadeus Payments in 2026: Outpayce, B2B Wallet and travel payment infrastructure

Updated 1 October 2026. Amadeus still has a large travel-payments business, but the current structure is easier to understand if you start with Outpayce from Amadeus. Amadeus consolidated its payments business into the wholly owned Outpayce company in 2023, while payment products remain closely integrated with Amadeus travel technology.

That means a search for ‘Amadeus Payments’ in 2026 can lead to several related products rather than one generic payment gateway. The portfolio covers accepting traveller payments, paying travel suppliers, virtual cards, payment orchestration and integrations with travel-agency, airline and hospitality workflows.

What is Amadeus Payments in 2026?

The payments business operates through Outpayce from Amadeus. Outpayce’s platform connects travel companies to payment-service providers, acquirers, local payment methods, fraud tools, foreign-exchange partners and buy-now-pay-later providers.

The current Outpayce Xchange Payment Platform describes one payment platform designed to support both accepting customer payments and paying suppliers.

What is the Xchange Payment Platform?

Xchange is the technology platform at the centre of Outpayce’s payments ecosystem. Outpayce currently says the ecosystem connects to hundreds of acquiring banks and local payment methods, dozens of payment-service providers and additional specialist partners.

Those figures are Outpayce’s current platform metrics and can change as partners are added or removed. The important architectural point is the aggregation model: a travel company can connect through one platform instead of building and maintaining separate integrations to every payment partner.

Is it a payment gateway?

Gateway functionality is part of the broader picture, but calling the entire current Amadeus/Outpayce payments business ‘a payment gateway’ is too narrow. The platform includes payment acceptance, orchestration, supplier payouts, virtual cards and other travel-specific payment functions.

A travel merchant accepting a customer’s card has different requirements from a travel agency paying an airline or hotel. Outpayce’s portfolio is designed to cover both sides of that journey.

What is B2B Wallet?

Outpayce B2B Wallet is a multi-currency supplier-payment solution used by travel sellers. It gives agencies access to virtual-card and payment options from financial-services partners so a payment method can be selected for a particular booking or supplier.

Amadeus currently lists B2B Wallet among its core travel-seller solutions. Outpayce states that the wallet is a technical solution providing access to payment services from third parties under their own terms.

Why virtual cards matter in travel

Travel agencies often collect money from the traveller and then need to pay several different suppliers. A virtual card can be generated for a specific booking, currency, amount or supplier, helping separate transactions and simplify reconciliation.

The value depends on the agency’s commercial arrangement, acceptance rates, fees and rebate structure. A virtual card is not automatically cheaper than every bank transfer or card payment; travel sellers need to model the economics for their supplier mix.

Payment orchestration explained

Payment orchestration means routing a transaction through an appropriate provider or method based on rules such as geography, currency, cost, acceptance, fraud risk or resilience. A merchant may want more than one acquirer so a single provider outage does not stop all payments.

In travel, orchestration can be especially complicated because customers and suppliers can be in different countries, bookings may be refundable or changed, and settlement can occur long before or after travel.

What does Outpayce integrate with?

Outpayce is designed to work with Amadeus travel systems as well as standalone API integrations. That close relationship matters because booking data can help reduce manual reconciliation between the reservation and its payment.

For a travel agency using Amadeus desktop tools, payments are only one part of the workflow. Our Amadeus Selling Platform Connect guide covers the booking and agent workspace rather than the payment infrastructure itself.

Is Outpayce a separate company from Amadeus?

Outpayce is a wholly owned Amadeus company created to consolidate the payments business. Amadeus reports that the business was transferred into Outpayce from January 2023 while retaining close integration across Amadeus product lines.

Outpayce later obtained regulatory authorisation in Spain as part of expanding its payments capabilities in Europe. Regulatory status applies to specific entities and services; it should not be interpreted as meaning every partner-connected payment method is directly provided by Outpayce itself.

What does this mean for South African travel agencies?

A South African agency evaluating Amadeus payment products should focus on the exact service being offered locally: supported currencies, card types, settlement flows, supplier acceptance, foreign-exchange treatment, fees, reconciliation and support.

A global product page does not prove that every acquiring partner or payment method is available on identical terms in South Africa. Travel sellers should request an implementation scope for their market and business model.

What should a travel business verify before deployment?

• Which legal entity provides each regulated payment service.
• Which acquiring banks and payment methods are available in the agency’s markets.
• Settlement currencies and foreign-exchange treatment.
• Virtual-card acceptance by the suppliers the agency uses most.
• Chargeback, refund and cancellation workflows.
• Reconciliation integration with the agency’s booking and back-office systems.
• Fees, rebates and contractual minimums.
• Fraud tools and responsibility for fraud decisions.
• Operational support and incident escalation.
• Data residency, PCI responsibilities and security requirements.

Is this only for airlines?

No. Amadeus and Outpayce position payments for airlines, travel sellers and hospitality businesses. The use case changes by segment: an airline may focus on accepting traveller payments globally, while an agency may place more emphasis on supplier payouts and virtual-card reconciliation.

That breadth is one reason the phrase ‘Amadeus Payments’ can be confusing. It describes a business area and ecosystem rather than one checkout screen.

How this fits into Amadeus

Payments are one part of a much larger Amadeus technology portfolio spanning airline IT, distribution, travel agencies and hospitality. For company context, our history of Amadeus covers the evolution from reservation technology into a wider travel-platform business.

Keeping those layers separate helps avoid a common SEO problem: a payments article should explain payment infrastructure, while the company-history and Selling Platform articles should answer different search intents rather than repeating the same generic Amadeus overview.

Bottom line

In 2026, ‘Amadeus Payments’ is best understood through Outpayce from Amadeus. The Xchange Payment Platform connects travel companies to a broad payments ecosystem, while products such as B2B Wallet focus on supplier payments and virtual cards. It is more than a conventional gateway, and buyers should evaluate the exact local providers, fees, regulatory roles and integrations that apply to their travel business rather than assuming every global platform capability is available identically in South Africa.