Outpayce, an end-to-end travel payments company, has launched its first ‘payments marketplace’ dedicated to travel, to enable its airline customers to browse, sort and filter payments partners connected to the Outpayce Xchange Payments Platform (XPP).
Recognising a range of challenges for travel companies when identifying, benchmarking, contracting and integrating new capabilities into their multi-market payments set-ups, Outpayce has joined forces with several airlines to co-create the first payments marketplace dedicated to travel.
Outpayce’s airline customers can investigate capabilities from hundreds of payment partners across the globe, with more to be added over time. The marketplace also enables Outpayce’s airline customers to thoroughly understand which countries, currencies and services are available with each connection.
It also looks to reduce review and decision-making time, with live data of the volume of travel companies and travel payments transactions each payment partner supports via Outpayce’s XPP.
“An airline might need to begin accepting several alternative payment methods to support new route expansion across a region,” explained Jean-Christophe Lacour, SVP and global head of product management and delivery at Outpayce. “With our marketplace catalogue, it’s easy to identify partners across those markets, using live transaction data from our platform to further assess the relevance of each prospective partner. If a partner is already supporting millions of travel-specific transactions in a region it builds confidence and helps travel companies move faster.”
Once an airline has requested a new capability from the marketplace, they can easily initiate the activation process from within the tool, and update payments orchestration flows ensuring the new capability is correctly factored into the airline’s real-time payment routing decisions.
Supporting payment expansion for airlines
Following several years of technical development, Outpayce says the marketplace is a ‘foundational step’ in its commitment to provide a fully open payments platform for travel. Payment companies that offer relevant capabilities can now connect to Outpayce with newly available APIs, reducing integration timelines by a factor of ten. This simplified integration means Outpayce can quickly add new capabilities to the marketplace catalogue, making it easier for airlines to quickly expand their payment options to meet new traveler and market requirements.
Maria Neamoniti, passenger services system manager at AEGEAN, also commented: “Being part of the creation of the marketplace catalogue has been a great experience for AEGEAN. Using the tool, we were able to easily find and compare payment connections, making it much simpler to choose the right options for new markets and different needs. This will help us improve how our payments work and bring new payment options to our passengers faster, making their travel experience even better.”
Outpayce’s marketplace, initially available to its airline customers, currently displays hundreds of payment partners across the world. The company plans to expand the number of partners, services, and products covered by the marketplace in the coming months.
