The diversity of the Americas means customer expectations for payments vary quite drastically whether a passenger is flying from the Caribbean or Canada. Customers in North America continue to champion credit, while in the less economically advanced Central and South Americas the landscape is far more fractured, with cash continuing to dominate in some areas.

Implementing an overarching payments strategy that meets traveller demand and maximises conversion across the region is therefore no small challenge. To streamline processes, technology has become key to improving payments access. Paul van Alfen, Managing Director of Up in the Air, notes that expectations on airlines have shifted with the emergence of ecommerce giants:

Typically, the benchmark would be an Uber or an Amazon, where you have a frictionless payments experience. That’s something the aviation industry would like to do, but then they would have to invest more in tokenisation and a card on file solution, which also opens up potential data breaches.

Cybersecurity and fraud have become more pressing concerns with the advent of AI. While the tech can help block suspicious activity, at the same time it can also be leveraged by bad actors. Van Alfen notes:
I think that’s going to be an interesting battle moving forward. But in the end the only way to stop fraud is to stop selling, and that’s not an option obviously.
Against this backdrop of malicious activity, multi-touchpoint payments and super apps are becoming an increasingly popular way of executing transactions. Already extremely popular in Asia, the tech could become more dominant in the Americas as the aviation industry taps emerging markets in countries like Brazil and Mexico. Van Alfen stresses the importance of developing a central payments architecture to ensure payments from any origin go through smoothly.
You have to zoom out and make sure you have a single strategy across all these channels and make sure it flows smoothly in a secure manner. And that’s definitely a challenge, there’s definitely room for improvement there.
Aviation Festival Americas 2026 will explore these challenges in detail on the dedicated payments track, where van Alfen will serve as moderator. At the event in Miami, he is especially looking forward to exploring the intersection between AI and payments.
I’m very interested to find out what the impact of AI will be and how airlines can organise themselves for this new channel. It will be uncharted territory where we can find out how this will work and what roles individual stakeholders will play.

Join us at Aviation Festival Americas 2026.

🎥 Watch the video to get the full interview with Paul van Alfen.

Questions asked include:

  • What is unique about the payments landscape in the Americas? How does the aviation industry need to meet diverse customer preferences in this disparate market?
  • Aviation’s dependence on legacy technology is well known. When it comes to payments, what could the Americas industry learn from other sectors?
  • What about combatting fraud? How can cybersecurity be embedded to airline payment strategies?
  • How can the aviation industry move to creating an omnichannel payments experience?

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