Travel Sector Has Chance for Payments Efficiency

The travel sector comeback has been underway since the end of the pandemic.

But the accompanying digital shift has been slow to come to the travel industry itself, where complexity reigns and interactions and payments still flow across a mix of digital and legacy platforms.

A traveler can (and usually does) book a flight online and may use a different app or site altogether to make hotel reservations or reserve a rental car. For consumers, travel agents, airlines and hotels, the payment supply chain can be a long one, marked by transactions flowing across disparate systems and back offices. For the companies involved, offering a range of payment options, including pay-over-time features, is no easy task.

“The need for simplification has grown as the complexities of the travel ecosystem have exploded,” Kristian Gjerding, co-founder and CEO at payments orchestration platform CellPoint Digital, told Karen Webster.

The traveler is not concerned with the mechanics of the…