Perfecting payments: the journey to value remains a complex process for airlines

An airline can spend millions improving its website, refining its offers and personalising the customer journey, only to lose the sale at the final click. That contradiction sits at the heart of the airline payments challenge.

At the T2RLEngage conference in London in Sep-2026, payments emerged as something much more significant than the final stage of a transaction. The discussion moved decisively towards conversion, customer experience, revenue protection, cash flow, data, localisation and the infrastructure needed to support increasingly complex airline retailing.

Greg Toussaint of Edgar, Dunn and Company estimated that passenger and ancillary revenues could be increased by 0.1% to 2% through payment optimisation. At the same time, the T2RLEngage conversations highlighted an annual industry payment cost of around USD22 billion and payment problems affecting roughly one in four customers.

The opportunity is therefore substantial, but so is the complexity. Local payment preferences, acquiring strategies, fraud, authorisation, settlement, corporate payments and increasingly autonomous AI agents all have to work together.

The answer is not simply more payment options. Airlines need better payment intelligence - using data, orchestration and AI to make smarter commercial decisions while retaining control.