Webinar Recap: Elevating the Customer Payment Experience in Airline E-commerce

In today's environment, the customer payment experience has become a critical touchpoint in building trust and ensuring customer satisfaction. In a recent webinar with IXOPAY, Phil Douglas from 2e Systems, and Fabien Mollinari from Aer Lingus, discuss how the digital landscape has evolved significantly since the year 2000, and with it, the expectations of airline customers have risen. During this time, the industry has witnessed profound changes, particularly in how online payments for flights and ancillaries are handled.

Today’s airline customer demands a seamless and comforting experience, especially when it involves large financial transactions. As Phil Douglas, CEO of 2e Systems, emphasized, customers today are highly sensitive about their personal finances and data security. Stating that “customers gain confidence when the process firstly appears state of the art and really is state of the art behind the scenes.” The challenge for airlines and their technology partners is to meet these expectations across several key areas:

1. Ease of Use: Payment processes should be as intuitive and straightforward as possible. The goal is to make online transactions almost as simple as tapping a phone at a supermarket checkout. Complex or confusing payment processes can erode customer trust quickly. Solutions like Apple Pay and Google Pay set the standard for simplicity, and airlines must strive to offer comparable ease of use, even when employing different gateways or methods.
2. Modern Interface: The digital experience must feel modern and state-of-the-art. A clunky or outdated interface not only frustrates users but also diminishes their confidence in the security and reliability of the system behind it. By partnering with leading payment providers like IXOPAY, 2e Systems ensures that its user interfaces reflect the cutting-edge technology that powers the transaction process.
3. Consistency Across Channels and Products: The payment experience must be consistent, whether customers are using a PC, tablet, mobile phone, or airport kiosk. Furthermore, this consistency should extend across all products and services offered throughout the travel journey. A disjointed experience at different stages—such as purchasing ancillaries online versus upgrading at check-in—can create unnecessary friction and reduce customer satisfaction.
4. Security: While ease of use and modernity are crucial, security is non-negotiable. Customers need to feel secure throughout the transaction process, and this must be backed by robust, behind-the-scenes security measures. A single security breach can cause irreparable harm to an airline's reputation and business. This is why 2e Systems has integrated top-tier security solutions like Tokenex and IXOPAY, ensuring that all parties—from the customer to the airline—are protected.
5. Speed: Few things are more frustrating for customers than a slow payment process. Long wait times can cause anxiety, leading customers to question the reliability of the transaction. The industry has moved far beyond the days of slow, clunky payments; today, speed is paramount. Airlines must deliver fast, efficient transactions to maintain customer trust.
6. Seamlessness: A seamless payment experience is critical to building and maintaining trust. Customers should never feel as though they've been passed off to an unknown third-party payment site, as this can create doubt about the security and legitimacy of the transaction. The entire process should feel like it is safely managed by the airline, from start to finish.

Fabien Mollinari, representing Aer Lingus, provided practical insights into how these principles are implemented in a real-world airline environment, “behind the scenes, one of the things that is crucial [to customer satisfaction] is tokenization...we must protect the customer data”. Aer Lingus, Ireland's national carrier, has focused on three key areas to enhance their payment stack: security, availability, and speed optimization.

1. Security: At the heart of Aer Lingus' approach is tokenization, which protects sensitive credit card information across all channels. Given the rising threat of data breaches, safeguarding customer data has never been more crucial.
2. Availability: To ensure consistent service, Aer Lingus has implemented a data center fallback option with IXOPAY. This allows the airline to automatically switch to a secondary data center in case of lag or unavailability, ensuring a seamless experience for customers.
3. Speed Optimization: Speed is integral to customer satisfaction, especially during the booking process. By optimizing routing with different payment service providers, Aer Lingus has reduced wait times and ensured a smoother transaction process, whether customers are booking online, via mobile, or through B2B connections.

Jacob Burcham, lead product strategist for IXOPAY, discussed how payment orchestration platforms are revolutionizing the airline industry–stating “In the fast-paced online travel industry, optimizing payments and reducing fraud rates are key to staying ahead”. With the proliferation of payment methods and the need for consistent, secure transactions across global markets, airlines are increasingly turning to orchestration platforms to manage complex payment ecosystems.

Orchestration platforms like IXOPAY provide several advantages:

1. Multi-PSP Strategy: Airlines can connect with multiple payment service providers (PSPs) to offer the best payment methods for each market, ensuring a tailored and optimized customer experience.
2. Universal Tokenization: A robust tokenization solution covers all channels, ensuring that sensitive payment information is consistently protected, no matter how or where a customer chooses to pay.
3. Payment Optimization: By leveraging the latest payment technologies and strategies, airlines can increase transaction success rates while reducing costs.

In conclusion, delivering an exceptional payment experience is critical for airlines to build trust and retain customers. By focusing on ease of use, modernity, consistency, security, speed, and seamlessness, and by leveraging advanced payment orchestration platforms, airlines can meet and exceed customer expectations in 2024 and beyond. As the digital landscape continues to evolve, staying ahead of these trends will be essential for success in the competitive world of airline e-commerce.