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Mexican airline, Aviacsa, is now accepting payment for flights at any of the 6,000 OXXO convenience stores in Mexico. This new payment alternative, provided on Aviacsa’s website by aviation IT specialist SITA, opens the door to online booking for those who do not own a credit card.
Eduardo Morales, CEO Aviacsa said: “Online booking is a convenient and cost-effective form of ticket purchase and we wanted to make it available to as many people as possible. We understand that not all passengers have credit cards at their disposal and so allowing them to pay at the OXXO stores makes direct booking with Aviacsa available to all. “Already we have seen a great response; in the first weeks we sold over 3,000 tickets in OXXO stores and expect this to rise to 35,000 by the end of this year.”
When booking a flight on www.aviacsa.com customers can now select OXXO as the form of payment. They then present a barcode receipt at any of the more than 6,000 locations across Mexico and pay for their ticket there. Once the payment is made to OXXO, Aviacsa is advised and the e-ticket is issued to the customer via e-mail. Olivier Layly, Regional Vice President, Latin American and Caribbean, SITA, said: “Recent economic pressures are prompting the airline industry to consider innovative technology solutions to improve services in a cost effective manner. By enabling Aviacsa to partner with OXXO, the largest chain of convenience stores in Latin America, SITA has opened online booking to a whole new group of passengers.”
This implementation is a great example of the global airline industry trend towards alternative forms of payments. Offering additional payment methods not only increases the target audience in regions and countries with low credit card penetration such as India, Russia and Germany, but it also helps to reduce distribution costs as most of these alternative payment methods incur merchant fees that are much lower than those of traditional credit card schemes.
To facilitate these alternative payment forms, and to provide flexibility for online purchases, SITA offers airlines “Book Now, Pay Later” functionality. This encourages online bookings by allowing passengers to provisionally book their flights with a time limit; they can then pay later either online, or at an airline office, or other approved location.
The success to date of this new payment option provided on the Aviacsa website by SITA has prompted the airline to offer a similar offline payment option at another major chain of stores in Mexico. This will increase the cash payment locations by several hundred by the end of the year.
Aviacsa is the third largest airline in Mexico, carrying 3.35 million passengers to 20 domestic and international destinations.
Theodore is the Co-Founder and Managing Editor of TravelDailyNews Media Network; his responsibilities include business development and planning for TravelDailyNews long-term opportunities.
