Centralized payment platform enables airlines to manage all travel pPayments seamlessly, bring payment methods to market in minutes, and improve the value of PSP relationships.
LONDON – CellPoint Mobile, a global payment solutions company whose technology enables airlines to easily manage and control the complex and costly travel payments ecosystem, is unveiling its newest platform, the Converged Payment Gateway to the global airline industry.
The Converged Payment Gateway, available to airlines as an installed or SaaS solution, is being released at a time when the number of payment channels used by airline passengers and travelers has grown exponentially over the past 24 months. At the same time, the rise of alternative payments, mobile payments, and the availability of multiple Payment Service Providers (PSPs) has created opportunities for airlines to create new revenue streams. In 2014, mobile travel bookings totaled $96 billion and accounted for 12.5% of all digital bookings made globally.
“Several airlines have a multi-PSP strategy, but CellPoint Mobile is seeing an increasing number of network, regional airlines and low-cost carriers that want to add another PSP to their payment infrastructure, both as a failover strategy and to take advantage of PSP geographic price differences,” said Kristian Gjerding, CEO of CellPoint Mobile. “These airlines, however, are often constrained by the costs of implementation, long time-to-market and challenges of managing multiple PSPs. CellPoint Mobile’s Converged Payment Gateway solution pre-integrates PSPs so that airlines can significantly shorten the time-to-market and reduce the costs of launching and managing new payment methods and PSPs to meet their passengers’ growing needs.”
With the ability to manage payment methods and PSPs in a matter of minutes, CellPoint Mobile’s Converged Payment Gateway solution enables airlines to turn the payment ecosystem into an asset that supports increased sales and greater margins, Gjerding said.
Improving Pathways to Purchase, Simplifying the Complexities of Travel Payments
Airlines’ payment ecosystems are under increasing pressure from a proliferation of new devices, growth of channels through which passengers are transacting, and ancillary revenue opportunities. This has resulted in lengthy IT integrations as airlines try to meet passengers’ demands for a variety of satisfying, convenient payment methods. Airlines, meanwhile, face potentially millions and billions in lost revenues as they wait for new payment solutions to be deployed.
The Converged Payment Gateway was developed in conjunction with CellPoint Mobile’s airline customers to combat these critical challenges and help them deploy new payment methods, currencies, and channels in minutes or days, not weeks or months, and to get more value from their relationships with Payment Service Providers (PSPs). From a single access point, airlines can manage, add, delete and update payment data easily and quickly, and process passenger payments and transactions seamlessly and securely for passengers. Airline revenues and margins improve when passengers have more paths to purchase from beginning to end of their journey.
“Our new payment platform enables airlines to process transactions in a very cost-effective manner, through a central hub that sits within their existing payments infrastructure,” Gjerding explained. “Through a single console, airlines can now easily manage all of their converged payment data with one-click functionality, putting them firmly back in control of their payments infrastructure.”
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