Heard the one about travel payment solutions before?

Here we go again - Travelport has partnered with PSP International to form a joint venture on an "innovative and integrated", payment system.

Ooops, sorry, forget to mention the "state-of-the-art" bit.

The JV will be branded eNett and Travelport has the majority stake.

But hasn't this been done before?

The memory cogs may not be as well oiled as they used to be but buried somewhere in the archive is something about Money Direct - a joint venture between Sabre and Amadeus formed in 2007.

Anyone remember it? When we last spoke to them in March 08, they were months away from a UK launch - hmmm!

And, wasn't that supposed to be the industry standard for automated payment schemes?

Anyway, eNett will automate payments, settlement and reporting....and here's an interesting bit "enable non traditiotravelport, amadeus, sabre, galileo, worldspan, gds, nal players in the travel industry, such as low cost carriers, who desire to distribute their products through the travel trade". Who would that be then?

Of course we wish the venture well in what is probably a vital piece of the automated travel jigsaw but excuse us for being just a little bit cynical.

We'll be back with an update...