CellPoint Digital, a fintech leader in cross-border payments, has seen increased demand for its Payment Orchestration Platform (POP), known as Velocity, throughout the travel industry, having recently on-boarded two major airlines. Partnering with Avianca airlines following Cebu Pacific last year, CellPoint Digital is set to implement its Velocity platform for both brands to boost digital revenues, deliver more frictionless payment experiences for customers and streamline internal processes. The accelerated demand comes at a time of rapid change for the travel industry; as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to disrupt consumers’ travel plans, airlines are looking for enhancements to convert and serve their customers.
Despite operating almost on opposite sides of the globe and with different business models, both Avianca and Cebu Pacific share the same challenges faced by the majority of international airlines:
These challengers require the roll-out of a sophisticated payment ecosystem and it is becoming clear that using a single Payment Service Provider or building an orchestration layer in-house neither provides the depth of payment functionality nor the range of payment methods modern airlines require to be competitive.
Payment Orchestration Platforms solve these issues by offering rapid access to a global payment eco-system, including a range of acquirers, PSPs, cards and alternative payment methods. Merchants access this modern payment platform as a service through a single point of integration and can streamline their internal payment operations as the end-to-end payment process becomes orchestrated across all channels, from checkout to reconciliation. The POP also delivers a unified payment experience across all channels, including call centers and agencies using NDC standard, to better serve consumers no matter how and where they choose to pay.
As the travel industry slowly re-opens, Cellpoint Digital anticipates that more airlines will embrace payment orchestration not just to improve their conversion rates and reduce their payment costs, but ultimately to offer the optimum payment experience for increasingly digital-first consumers.
