Article
How airlines can recover millions without selling another seat
At Adyen, we've helped airlines around the world improve authorization rates, reduce payment costs and simplify complex financial operations. Here's how.
Every airline invests significant effort in optimizing fleet utilization, pricing, and fuel costs. Yet millions of dollars in revenue are still lost after a customer has already decided to book. Payment declines, unnecessary cross-border costs, and abandoned checkouts silently erode profitability. Optimizing payments has become one of the fastest ways for airlines to improve margins without adding more passengers or increasing fares.
Here's how we make sure you're capturing all of it.
1. Recover more bookings with higher authorization rates
Challenge: Nearly has hit a card decline while booking travel online. Most of these aren't fraud or failed intent. They're expired cards, cross-border friction, or an issuer being overly cautious. Every decline is considered a revenue the airline already earned and then lost.
Solution: Adyen combines gateway, risk and acquiring on one platform, helping airlines approve more genuine transactions while keeping fraud under control.
Success story: Cathay Pacific increased authorization rates by 10% in India after moving to Adyen's direct acquiring network, while simplifying its payment setup.
2. Reduce payment costs with local acquiring
Challenge: Cross-border payments often come with higher processing fees and lower authorization rates. For global airlines, those extra costs quickly add up across millions of transactions.
Solution: Adyen's local acquiring network processes payments locally, improving authorization rates while reducing card processing costs.
Success story: Vietnam Airlines used Adyen's local acquiring capabilities to improve payment performance while reducing payment costs across key markets.
3. Let passengers pay how they prefer
Challenge: Travelers expect to pay with the payment methods they know and trust. If their preferred option isn't available, many abandon the booking before completing payment.
Solution: Through a single integration, Adyen gives airlines access to more than 200 local payment methods, making it easier for international travelers to complete their purchase.
Success story: Vietnam Airlines enhanced its checkout experience by offering travelers a more seamless and flexible way to pay, helping improve the overall customer journey.
4. Capture every onboard sale (offline payments)
Challenge: In-flight connectivity isn't always reliable, which means airlines can miss revenue opportunities when payments can't be processed.
Solution: Adyen's Store and Forward capability lets cabin crews securely accept payments while offline. Transactions are processed automatically once connectivity is restored. Airlines using Store and Forward can continue selling food, beverages, duty-free products and Wi-Fi throughout the flight, even without an internet connection.
Watch how payments are easily captured in-flight by Immfly x Adyen:
5. Improve payment performance with AI
Challenge: Payment performance is constantly changing. A payment strategy that works today may not deliver the same results tomorrow as fraud patterns and issuer behavior evolve.
Solution: Adyen Uplift uses AI to continuously optimize payment conversion, fraud prevention and payment costs in real time.
Success story: Early Adyen Uplift pilots have delivered up to a 6% increase in payment conversion rates, helping merchants recover more revenue without increasing fraud.
One platform built for airlines
Airlines don't process payments like retailers. They manage online bookings, airport payments, onboard purchases, travel agencies, multiple currencies and global operations.
Adyen brings everything together on one platform, giving airlines a simpler way to manage payments while improving performance.
Want to see how Adyen can help your airline recover more revenue? Get in touch with our team.