Airlines have access to a host of payment capabilities and partners, such as payment gateways, authentication layers, compliance platforms and more. A Payment Orchestration Platform uses front-end and back-end technology that integrates all these disparate functions under one umbrella, in order to create a seamless transaction process across every channel. This is achieved by streamlining data flows and automating automation, and it can result in a number of perks for merchants.

Frictionless processes

On the customer side, Payment Orchestration Platforms gives airlines greater control over their payment policy, allowing them to quickly build a custom arrangement of payment methods, acquirers and PSPs that maintains a seamless checkout process for the user.

The platform enables a smoother system and back-end processes for the vendor. Conventional payments are usually managed according to a specific need, with each function in the transaction process added manually, piece by piece – a time-consuming feature of traditional payment options. Payment Orchestration Platforms streamline this process to simultaneously manage multiple payment partners and unify these layers to let new payment capabilities be easily added.

These platforms can standardise the data formats from various partners and align them with alternative payment methods, while at the same time identifying potential issues and analysing chargeback requests. This simplifies the entire transaction process, leaving the airline’s back-end services untouched.

Enhanced security

For good reason, regulators often serve as obstacles to fast and efficient payments. By enhancing the compliance process, Payment Orchestration Platforms help customers meet the regulator rules, such as PCI-compliance. Airlines must meet PCI guidelines in all their channels and undergo an annual certification process, but a Payment Orchestration Platform lets an airline pass the burden and liability onto the Payment Orchestration partner, who is able to combine advanced pre-authorisation screening with numerous fraud systems.

Utilising smart, detailed consumer data, the platform can then boost fraud detection for every market, removing factors that slow down verification. Since this helps enhance the authorisation process, airlines can then accept more payments and convert more customers. This is especially useful when it comes to offering payment methods like split payments that customers prefer, and therefore boost conversion rates.

Reduced costs

Payment Orchestration Platforms deploy a local acquirer strategy, which leverages smart, dynamic transaction routing in order to quickly identify the best available acquirer at every location involved in the payment process. This way, interchange costs are reduced, along with cross-border transaction traffic.

The traditional payments system involved routing card transactions to a select few acquirers, which then incurred higher service fees and lower acceptance rates. The necessary (and costly) modifications to payment providers that are sometimes involved in conventional processes to overcome this issue are also removed by Payment Orchestration. Airlines can use the platform to provide a cheaper and more UX-friendly payment experience.

Enhanced value

With conventional payments, customer and transaction data is often fragmented across different channels and payment service providers. This presents difficulties for airlines who want to optimise processes, as disparate information is harder to analyse and manage in order to enhance the payment experience, for instance, through personalisation. A key perk of orchestration is that it provides airlines with a unified view of all their payment transactions – no matter the channel or partner involved – so they can choose the most suitable partner and level up this process.

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