Throughout 2025, Edgar, Dunn & Company’s (EDC) Travel Payments practice will be publishing seven articles as part of the series “From Plumbing To Storefront: How “Payments” is Changing for Airlines” to cover seven identified payment-related issues to four themes: payment acceptance, payment issuing, internal organization and technology & processes.

Julia Callejo (Senior Consultant, Paris) addresses the first issue related to payment acceptance, namely, how to control cost of acceptance while optimising payment coverage. This short article summarises how airlines’ payment policies are evolving over time and which factors define them. It also illustrates common pain points related to costs of payment acceptance, market reach and payment conversion as well as describes potential solutions based on actual case studies.

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The Evolution of Airlines’ Payment Acceptance

In our consulting work with a wide range of airlines across the globe, we have noticed relevant changes in airline payment acceptance policies. Some of these changes have been specially evidenced after the Covid-19 pandemic. Airlines do not only look at their direct sales channels anymore (e.g., airline’s own website, mobile app) but they are now also increasingly paying attention to their indirect sales channels (e.g., sales through online travel agents or travel management companies via GDS or NDC channels) and increasingly realise the importance of pro-actively managing their payment acceptance function.

More factors, including sales geography, payee profile, preferred payment methods and payment providers that will process transactions, are increasingly considered by airlines. This has led many airlines to avoid blanket or one-size-fits-all payment acceptance policies. They now cater for nuances and remain flexible and adaptable to industry changes.

The payment acceptance policy is the backbone of the airline’s overall payments strategy. It defines the dos and don’ts of what payment methods to accept where and how. Consequently, this policy will have a direct impact on the performance of key payment areas such as the cost of payment acceptance, market reach and payment conversion.

Pain Points Related to payment acceptance

Despite the differences between one airline to another, our two decades of close collaboration with them have revealed several recurring pain points across the three key areas of payment acceptance: cost of acceptance, market reach, and payment conversion.

These pain points and their respective solutions are varied but share some commonalities:

• First and foremost, data is king, and lack of data prevents improvements. Access to detailed payment performance data is essential to identify both what is going wrong and the root cause. For instance, one airline headquartered in EMEA had never looked at card approval rates by country where the traveller is located, and was shocked to find out that nearly half of US-based cardholders experienced card declines on its website.

• Secondly, close collaboration with payment providers is necessary to address problems in a timely manner. For instance, some acquirers have a pro-active outreach team to directly contact large issuers in case of unusual card declines driven by one particular issuer.

• And last, but not least, client-centric payment strategies are a “must” and require flexibility and quick time-to-market. Meeting the changing expectations from clients (either consumer, small businesses or corporate travellers) increasingly require internal payment expertise and modern payment technology.

Our consulting assistance with airlines across the globe enabled EDC to identify specific pain points and unmet needs for airlines related to payment acceptance as well as potential solutions:

Learnings From Actual Airline Case Studies

EDC has developed a proprietary approach called “360o Payments Diagnostic” to engage with all relevant departments within airlines and conduct a holistic review and benchmark of airlines payments across all sales channels. This experience has enabled EDC to identify key pain points for airlines and develop the best solutions to solve them. It is always important to size pain points as well as the impact of potential solutions. Demonstrating a compelling return on investment is indeed key to convince internal and external stakeholders to act swiftly. The high-level case studies per key payment area below illustrate the order of magnitude of the pain points identified and highlights the need for airlines to focus on these significant topics.

These examples show that airlines’ payment acceptance policies need to be well-designed and constantly reviewed for airlines to remain competitive, keep abreast of changes in the payments industry and support growth. These best practices allow airlines to optimise payment costs, protect revenue, and uncover new revenue opportunities.

Stay tuned for more learnings and insights in the next issues of our article series “From Plumbing to Storefront: How “Payments” is Changing for Airlines”. Coming up next month, we will address another important payment acceptance topic: Optimisation of Acquiring Contracts.

Please reach out to us at travelpayments@edgardunn.com if you want to share your thoughts on our articles or if you want to arrange an introduction call to discuss travel payments.  We can all learn from each other and Edgar, Dunn & Company welcomes discussions with airlines, travel providers and payment providers!

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The content of this article does not reflect the official opinion of Edgar, Dunn & Company. The information and views expressed in this publication belong solely to the author(s).