CellPoint Digital Teams With Air Europa on Payment Orchestration

Travel-industry-focused payment orchestration provider CellPoint Digital has launched a partnership with Air Europa.

The collaboration, announced Thursday (Feb. 20), is designed to help the air carrier process a wider range of alternative payment methods (APMs), and comes as Air Europa looks to expand and increase its service frequency to Latin America and the Caribbean from its hub in Madrid.

“As Air Europa enters its next growth chapter, it is crucial for the carrier to have a robust payments infrastructure that will support and nurture this expansion,” CellPoint Digital Co-founder and CEO Kristian Gjerding said in a news release.

“Our new Payment Orchestration Platform, with Air Europa as one of its first clients, will help Air Europa optimize its payment strategy, increase the number of APMs it supports, and expand its range of acquirers, giving the airline additional control and visibility of its financial health.”

According to the release, CellPoint’s orchestration platform will complement Air Europa’s internal orchestration system, and route transactions to boost acceptance, simplify and centralize back-end reconciliation and integrate more than 160 global APMs.

“The platform also considers the pricing, processing and acceptance currency and geographical location of each processor, increasing the success rate of transactions and reducing per-transaction costs for Air Europa,” the release added.

PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster spoke recently with CellPoint Digital’s Gjerding about the digital shift in the travel sector, especially as it relates to payments.

“The need for simplification has grown as the complexities of the travel ecosystem have exploded,” he said.

The traveler is not focused on the mechanics of the payment process, Gjerding added. They want to get what they want for the right price and without friction.

When making a travel-related transaction, “you’re touching a booking system or reservation system, and then you’re touching a loyalty platform … and then as you go through and pay, then you’re moving to the back-office part of it, where the reconciliation and transfer of funds takes place,” he said.

CellPoint Digital introduced the payment orchestration offering for the travel sector earlier this week, saying it is designed to support the industry’s move to “modern retailing practices” and simplify the complexity of travel payments.

“The travel industry faces a once-in-a-generation transformation creating a unique set of payment challenges that generic payment solutions simply cannot address,” Gjerding said in the company’s announcement.