From Promise to Delivery and Beyond:
The Journey to Travel’s New Retailing Model

By Steven Osei

Airlines are racing toward Offer-Order-Settle-Deliver (OOSD), the single-order model for modern retail replacing legacy ticketing and merchandising with Amazon-style ecommerce experiences. But as CellPoint Digital highlighted at this month’s T2RL Engage conference in London, the industry is missing advanced payments capabilities to match the complexity of the offer. While the industry maintains an aspirational roadmap to achieve 100% OOSD, there is no guaranteed deadline, and too many travel brands still rely on outdated systems to support new and hybrid retailing strategies.

The promise of OOSD (dynamic pricing, product bundling, and higher revenues) will remain incomplete unless payments are re-architected. CellPoint Digital is at the forefront of this effort, creating the infrastructure to connect retail innovation with payment reality. Airline retailing could unlock $45 billion in potential new value by 2030, according to McKinsey, but only when coupled with the payment systems and technology capable of supporting complex, dynamic retailing models that are still being developed.

This was the message delivered by CellPoint Digital CEO Kristian Gjerding in his keynote address at T2RL 2025, and reinforced by Chief Product Officer, Tom Randklev’s airline workshop. The current gap between retailing aspirations and outdated payment infrastructure is holding airlines back. With CellPoint Digital’s One Source Orchestration platform, it no longer has to.

One Source Orchestration (OSO) is the airline-native payments control plane that powers modern travel retailing. Rather than treating payments as a separate downstream process, OSO embeds orchestration and optimization into OOSD so every order can be priced, paid, and processed in one flow.

The opportunities presented by modern OOSD implementation are significant. Airlines gain complete control over the customer's entire travel package experience, thereby improving competitiveness in customer service and package delivery compared to other travel sellers. This control translates directly into revenue: modern retailing could represent an opportunity exceeding 2-3% of revenue, or 15% of EBITDA.

These opportunities, however, come with expanded complexity that many airlines underestimate. Significantly larger package pricing increases the risk, making fraud mitigation more crucial than ever. When average transaction values rise from hundreds to thousands of dollars, fraud losses can quickly impact profitability if not properly managed.

Creating a smooth shopping experience that consumers are already very familiar with, while managing inventory effectively, makes fulfillment critical. Airlines must coordinate with a wide range of service providers who need to be contracted and paid efficiently. This requires payment systems capable of handling multi-party settlements and complex approval workflows.

Market-specific requirements add another layer of complexity. Airlines must support local preferred payment methods per market, maintain back-end stability across primary, secondary, and international processors, and provide advanced payment acceptance and refunding processing for varying components of complex packages.

Traditional payment infrastructure struggles with these requirements because it was designed for simpler transaction models. Single-item purchases with straightforward refund policies don't require the sophisticated routing, settlement, and reconciliation capabilities that OOSD demands.

The challenge becomes particularly acute when airlines attempt to implement OOSD capabilities using existing payment systems. What appears to work for simple transactions quickly breaks down when confronted with multi-component orders, split payments, and complex refund scenarios.

Is there a single solution that can deliver all of those capabilities at each stage? Yes, and it’s our newly launched One-Source Orchestration platform or OSO.

The OSO platform is the payments "brain" that allows airlines and travel brands to behave like Amazon under an OOSD model. Rather than treating payments as a separate downstream process, OSO integrates payment orchestration and optimization directly into each stage of the retail lifecycle.

During the offer stage, OSO presents the optimal payment methods based on customer context, market requirements, and order characteristics. This goes beyond simply displaying available payment methods to intelligently curating options that maximize conversion while minimizing costs.

At checkout, OSO supports multi-tender orders that combine different payment types in a single transaction. Whether customers want to pay with cards plus vouchers plus points, or any other combination, the system handles routing and settlement automatically.

Settlement efficiency across multiple providers becomes manageable when OSO coordinates authorization, capture, and reconciliation activities. Airlines gain visibility into payment performance across their entire operation while reducing the operational overhead of managing multiple vendor relationships.

Delivery capabilities extend payment processing into the travel journey itself, supporting in-journey payments, service recovery scenarios, and complex refund processing. This ensures that payment capabilities match the sophistication of modern airline retailing throughout the customer lifecycle.

OSO's real advantage lies in optimizing payment flows based on modern retailing practices, specific market and regional conditions, and advanced, configurable business rules. This creates a payment infrastructure that is flexible, scalable, and both purpose-built and future-proof for successful airline and travel retailing.