Take off with payments
How airlines can boost revenue potential, uplift traveler experiences, and chart a new course for growth
In the aviation industry, the power of payment innovation is taking flight, transforming traditional business models and fueling a new era of growth. The rise of digital payments isn’t just about streamlining transactions; it’s about enabling airlines to unlock a wealth of data insights, optimize revenue, and fortify their defenses against fraud. We can help you build an effective payment strategy for the future—whether you’re looking to bolster retailing efforts, drive stronger loyalty or improve efficiency. As airlines continue to embrace innovative payment solutions, they’re not just changing how customers pay for their journeys, they’re reshaping the future of air travel itself. Let's navigate this journey together to fuel your success.
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Case studies, statistics, research and recommendations are provided “AS IS” and intended for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for operational, marketing, legal, technical, tax, financial or other advice. Visa Inc. does not make any warranty or representation as to the completeness or accuracy of the Information within this document, nor assume any liability or responsibility that may result from reliance on such Information. The Information contained herein is not intended as legal advice, and readers are encouraged to seek the advice of a competent legal professional where such advice is required.
How will you uplift your traveler experiences?
First, maximize your direct contact with travelers to drive conversion, revenue, and share of wallet while delivering the frictionless experience they expect.
Boost sales through personalization
Leverage the power of personalization to help boost sales with a tokenization service to simplify the customer payment experience whilst tailoring the journey more to your customers. Capture customer insights that can enable the promotion of fares to preferred destinations and automatically default to customers' chosen payment methods. This approach streamlines the purchasing process, fostering customer loyalty and repeat business.
Transform your airline's digital journey to match your tech-savvy travelers' needs. Collaborate with an ecosystem that facilitates seamless digital payments for instant purchases such as in-flight meals or excess baggage. Picture a world where an overweight luggage alert instantly sends a secure payment link to the traveler; no lines, no delays, just effortless efficiency. In-flight, seize the opportunity to boost sales. Simplify purchases for refreshments, entertainment, and duty-free goods with contactless mobile PoS terminals or in-app stored credentials.
Maintaining passenger engagement is essential to encourage repeat bookings. Utilizing a tokenization service empowers you to leverage each customer's purchasing history across various channels and payment methods. This comprehensive view is indispensable in today's competitive market to help you enhance loyalty. By understanding your travelers' preferences and behavior, you can tailor your messaging to resonate more effectively, turning one-time travelers into loyal long-term customers.
How will you boost your revenue potential?
Next, aim to drive acceptance, reduce risk, and increase repeat purchases to boost profitability while implementing flexible and cost-effective payment options.
Leveraging a data-centric platform powered by sophisticated AI and machine learning can enhance profitability by optimizing the approval of good orders and minimizing unwarranted rejections. It's crucial to have a fraud management partner with risk analysts that have knowledge of the aviation industry. Their expertise in global and regional fraud patterns will be instrumental in refining a strategy that can help your airline stay ahead.
It’s essential to scrutinize account patterns, user behavior, and device attributes to block potential account takeovers and safeguard your loyalty programs. Preventing account takeover and loyalty fraud particularly before it happens helps minimize any impact on your customers—and save your business costs, hassle,brand issues, and customer attrition downstream. A robust account takeover protection solution can also shield your airline from the creation of fraudulent accounts for card testing and other types of fraud, protecting financial health and sustainability.
To enhance profitability and customer satisfaction, offer your customers a diverse array of payment methods. Collaborate closely with your payment gateway provider to strategically route transactions to acquirers, ideally based on specific business rules designed to boost authorization rates. In markets where the European Payment Services Directive (PSD2) with its strong customer authentication (SCA) requirement is applicable, employ the latest EMV® 3DS version to offer a superior payment experience and work with your payments provider to optimize the use of exemptions.
How will you chart a new course for growth?
Finally, future-proof your payment infrastructure to keep pace with growth while controlling costs.
Future-proofing your payment infrastructure is crucial for sustained growth. With a single connection to an open payments platform, you gain access to comprehensive payment, fraud management, and infrastructure capabilities to support your expansion into new routes, markets, and payment types. Our robust ecosystem of partners can also fuel your innovation, so you can soar to your next destination with confidence and ease.
Navigating complex national regulations and mandates can be challenging. Payment platform providers are typically familiar with global card scheme mandates, but local card schemes can have unique rules. Adhering to regional regulations is essential and national mandates can be even more stringent to comply with. Partner with a knowledgeable payment platform provider with the necessary infrastructure to streamline compliance, so you can get to market faster with less investment.
Expanding your business to new destinations requires understanding and addressing local preferences to ensure a seamless customer experience. This involves partnering with a payments provider that facilitates acceptance of global and local payment methods and has strong relationships with regional acquirers. Furthermore, your payments partner should deliver comprehensive reporting and analytics for a unified view across payment methods. Optimizing your digital channels to cater to these preferences can significantly enhance the customer experience in these new markets.
Adjusting your fraud management strategy to accommodate regional trends is vital because of varying fraud patterns and customer behaviors across markets. Relying solely on historical data from existing markets for new ones won’t give you successful results. An AI-driven fraud management solution, equipped with accurate regional data, can help you establish appropriate screening rules. Your fraud management platform provider should ideally offer access to regional airline and travel industry experts that can help fine-tune your fraud strategy and rules.
Question 1
Embrace digital channels and evolving needs
Enhance loyalty with a complete view of customers
Elevate your fraud management
Protect against account takeover
Increase payment authorization rates
Question 2
A future-ready payments platform
Comply with regulations in new regions
Tailor payments to local preferences
React effectively to regional fraud patterns
Question 3
Now onto the next stage to fuel your innovation...
Maximize subscription and upselling opportunities
Take control of customer lifecycles
While tokenization can help to improve authentication and security by replacing PANs with unique identifiers, it can also empower your airline to quickly identify returning customers and expedite their payment process to enhance customer experience and loyalty. Incorporating a service that automatically updates card-on-file credentials can also help to diminish friction and lower the risk of checkout abandonment.
Maximize revenue by enticing customers with subscription offers for premium services like fast-track security, priority boarding, or increased luggage allowance. An account updater service can provide a seamless subscription management and refresh payment credentials. There’s also opportunities to add revenue by offering additional services closer to customers’ departure dates. Leverage customer purchasing data to identify upsell opportunities like airport parking, car hire, or extra luggage.
Dreaming of his next getaway...
Meet John! He’s booking a honeymoon for him and his partner—and has even saved his loyalty points for this trip of a lifetime. Let’s get them to the beach!
John logs in to his account and to check his loyalty points balance. He expects his account to be secure. To make this happen, identify suspicious account activity with strategies like device profiling, geo-location, behavior and bot detection to help block fraudsters from taking over and exploiting customer accounts, loyalty points or personal information. This way you can prevent bad transactions before they take place, helping to minimize potential fraud downstream, hassle for the customer, brand issues, and any lost revenue from customer attrition.
Logging in
As John searches for flights and packages, he is delighted to see personalized offers that encourage him to purchase. To make this happen, use data-driven insights to help you create personalized offers based on customers’ shopping history and preferences. This way, you can unlock new revenue opportunities and drive customer engagement with personalized experiences for all your travelers, not just the honeymoon planners.
Making a booking
Solution: Account Takeover Protection ➜
Solution: Visa Consulting & Analytics
Search
Book
Pay
John has chosen his honeymoon destination, and now he’s ready to book. He’s happy to see that he can choose or add his preferred payment method, whether that’s a digital wallet or buy now, pay later. To make this happen, implement a payment solution that allows you to quickly and easily add new payment methods worldwide with easy integration. This will help you increase conversions, reduce costs and efforts, and reach more customers in domestic markets or expand globally.
Solution: Payment Methods ➜
Payment successful: John’s booking is confirmed! He was later able to purchase health insurance and a higher baggage allowance without re-entering his card details. To make this happen, use a tokenization service that stores payment credentials and automatically keeps them up to date to reduce checkout friction with seamless one-click payment experiences that can help ancillary sales take off.
Solution: Token Management Service ➜
Meanwhile, at the baggage drop-off…
Meet Maria! She’s adventurous, digitally-savvy, and wants to see the world—but may be quick to complain if things go wrong. Let’s keep things seamless!
At the airport
Maria arrives stressed because she needs to extend her baggage weight allowance, but the airline staff are tied up. She’s relieved to see she can pay via a QR code! To make this happen, utilize a payment solution that enables you to create a secure payment link, checkout button, or QR code to accept online payments. You’ll be able to support digital payment channels like chat commerce and enhance the customer experience by enabling payment of extra fees with no need to wait in line.
Solution: Pay by Link
Maria is waiting at the gate when it’s announced that her flight is delayed. She’s ready to post a complaint on social media when she’s contacted about compensation options. To make this happen, take advantage of a payments solution with payout capabilities that can deliver compensation swiftly to a customer’s preferred card or account. This will eliminate time and effort from the compensation payment process and boost customer satisfaction.
Solution: Payouts1 ➜
Flight delay
Baggage
On the flight
During her flight later that day, Maria is happy to see a variety of drinks and snacks on board—and that her airline accepts contactless payments. She expects a seamless experience. To make this happen, ensure your payment solution integrates with contactless-enabled terminals and other devices to deliver the convenience travelers expect, even in the air. This way, you can drive ancillary sales with smooth, enjoyable in-flight experiences.
Solution: Card Present Connect & Acceptance Devices
While others get ready to board…
Meet Eddy! He’s a frequent flyer that expects travel to be stress-free, whether he’s flying personally or on business. Let’s make him comfortable!
Eddy pays monthly for VIP lounge access so he can relax before his flights; he’s even considered subscriptions for fast-track security to minimize his stress. To make this happen, leverage recurring billing to streamline subscription payments, securely store payment details, and automatically keep details up-to-date when used with Account Updater.2 This can help drive revenue and keep customers happy with smooth-running subscription services.
Solution: Recurring Billing ➜
Pre-flight
Day of
Post-flight
Once Eddy is seated, he logs in to his account on the inflight entertainment system. His payment credentials are already stored to make purchases on board—securely. To make this happen, leverage network tokenization that helps to store payment credentials and keep them up-to-date. This can help you can drive ancillary sales with smooth, enjoyable in-flight experiences.
Dispute prevention & resolution
A couple of weeks later, Eddy notices a transaction from the airline that he doesn’t recognize. He calls his bank to dispute the transaction. Luckily, the airline is notified of the pre-dispute and is able to resolve it! To make this happen, implement post-purchase solutions to quickly resolve disputes with issuer collaboration. This way, issuers can send you dispute notifications for immediate refund – or facilitate automated resolution – to help prevent potential chargebacks, friendly fraud and disputes.
Solution: Verifi ➜
Passengers arrive at their destination…
Meet Becky! She often travels with family and friends without problems, but this time her baggage hasn’t arrived. Let’s do some damage control!
Claim and dispute resolution
Becky has complained to airline staff, who rapidly offer her compensation. To make this happen, use a payment solution that supports settlement of approved compensation claims so you can reduce the time and effort associated with the compensation claim payment process and improve customer experience.
Rewarded for loyalty
When she gets home, Becky’s pleased to see her frequent flyer points are updated—and that she now has enough points for a future booking. To make this happen, deploy a tokenization service that links payment tokens with loyalty information so that customers receive points for every eligible purchase. This can set you on a course for long-term loyalty and encourage repeat purchasing, even if something goes wrong during the journey.
Making a booking – again
When she logs into her account months later, Becky is delighted that the digital experience is tailored to her interests. She’s offered the flights and travel extras she always looks for at competitive rates. To make this happen, employ a tokenization service that connects payments, customer data, and network tokens for a complete view of your customers’ buying behavior across all payment methods and channels they use.
Now let's look at some industry collaborations...
Solution: Decision Manager ➜
Use cases are for illustrative purposes only. Program providers are responsible for their programs and compliance with any applicable laws and regulations. Actual fund availability depends on receiving financial institution and region. Availability varies by market. Please refer to your representative for more information on availability. The card issuer must be enrolled in the Visa Account Updater program or the Mastercard Automatic Billing Updater program or the American Express Cardrefreshers™ Program.
Together, let’s unlock new innovations and revenue opportunities with payments. Our industry experts can help you optimize your payments acceptance strategy as part of your digital transformation and growth.
FlySafair wanted to meet customer demand for time-sensitive information via digital channels, such as flight details, delay alerts, and boarding passes as well as the option to make quick, easy mobile payments when needed. We helped FlySafair integrate Clickatell’s Chat Commerce Platform so their customers could access information about their booking via WhatsApp. The Clickatell platform also includes Chat 2 Pay, which enables in-messaging payments via Cybersource, so customers could use the FlySafair WhatsApp channel to pay for extra products and services.
Results
Improved satisfaction. Travelers appreciate the convenience and can save time with effortless mobile payments. More secure payments. No need for travelers to read their payment details to a call center agent over the phone.
We are always looking for ways to improve our customer experience and are therefore very excited that our customers can now pay for their luggage with a payment link shared to their mobile phones via WhatsApp. There is no need anymore for our customers to go in a queue at the airport to pay for luggage.”
"
Kibby Gordon, Chief Marketing Officer, FlySafair
Flysafair
Iberia
Aeromexico
Iberia was under pressure to secure every sale they could while managing emerging risk trends from new payment methods and gift card functionalities. They needed to adapt to deeper changes in consumer behavior. Iberia harnessed Decision Manager’s Identity Behavior Analysis, which uses cross-merchant data from the Visa network to recognize genuine repeat customers—and legitimate new customers. All Iberia’s accepted payment methods, from payment cards to digital wallets to gift cards, are now fed into Decision Manager, which means more end-to-end protection. And transactions across payment methods and channels are consolidated, empowering the Iberia team with deeper insights and helping deliver stronger protection and higher acceptance rates.
20%+ increase in conversion 80% reduction in rejection rates 60% reduction in review rates
Alfredo García Grande Digital Business, Direct Sales & NDC Division, Iberia
Technology should be doing what is automatic and repetitive, leaving people to look at more valuable insights. With our Cybersource solution and the data we have available, this is now possible, and we’re seeing the benefits.”
Aeromexico is constantly innovating to make their customer booking experience as seamless as possible. Customers can now interact with a chatbot through Facebook Messenger to search for and track flights, gather information, and pay. We helped Aeromexico boost ancillary revenue by enabling their chatbot solution to accept payments via WhatsApp. Passengers receive a message with personalized offerings based on their customer profile. Card-on-file and digital wallet compatibility make it a secure, convenient, and frictionless purchase experience.
Frictionless payments. Customers can easily and seamlessly buy flight extras. New channels. Customers can receive timely notifications about their flights. Easy shared purchases. Customers can share flights with friends and family for easy trip planning.
Brian Gross Vice President of eCommerce, AeroMexico
There are so many reasons for Aeromexico to launch a chatbot and offer conversational commerce which is taking off in North America and around the world. Mexican users are among the world’s most avid users of Facebook and are constantly becoming more familiar with chat- and Facebook-based services.”
Amadeus
Sabre
With continued growth in the numbers of consumers making their travel bookings direct with airlines and other travel companies across multiple devices and social commerce, balancing frictionless, cross-channel payments acceptance with the increasing levels of fraud and regulatory compliance has never been more challenging for the travel industry. Working together to meet the changing needs of global airlines and travel companies, Cybersource and Amadeus provide a comprehensive, industry specific approach to fraud mitigation and payment acceptance, with services accessed via the Cybersource API on the Amadeus Xchange Payment Platform. This is consistently updated, ensuring access to the latest innovations.
Overcoming friction and fraud Increasing payment acceptance wherever you transact Regulatory compliance services
Industry collaboration
Bart Tompkins, Managing Director, Payments, Amadeus
Our partnership with Cybersource has recently strengthened and via the Amadeus ecosystem, customers can now access a wider range of Cybersource’s payment, fraud and authentication management services. Thanks to our bespoke travel-centric solution, we can provide appropriate fraud screening, as well as giving merchants the information they need to pursue various exemptions under SCA.”
Sabre, a Cybersource partner, offers software, data, mobile, and distribution solutions that are used by hundreds of airlines and thousands of hotel properties to manage critical operations, including passenger and guest reservations, revenue management, flight, network, and crew management. Sabre uses the Cybersource payment management platform to deliver payment acceptance, fraud management, and authentication services to its customers. Seamlessly integrated with Sabre Payment Services, the comprehensive solution helps organizations in the travel industry streamline operations, defend payment transactions from fraud, and provide frictionless customer experiences at the digital point of sale.
Philip Likens, Director of Sabre Labs
Tomorrow’s travelers have a set of expectations fueled by ubiquitous access to information, smooth transactional experiences, and increasingly personalized offers.”
So, what's next?
Results may vary and are not claimed to represent typical results, experience, and are not intended to represent or guarantee that anyone will achieve the same or similar results.
