This includes fees paid to payment providers as well as indirect costs such as capital expenses, additional workforce needed to support manual processes, and lost revenue.
In the same study, conducted by Amadeus last year, airlines have shared the fact that their main problem with the payment area was the management of payments to their different suppliers.
For a practical illustration of this, let's take a look at Wizz Air's specific case. After a decade of solid growth, the largest low-cost airline in Central and Eastern Europe is looking for a way to streamline its payment infrastructure. Airline companies frequently work through intermediaries to access payment partners such as commercial banks.
This provides additional coverage but increases the cost of complexity and can lead to higher costs and lower payment performance.
"Working with Wizz Air and its favorite Wirecard partner, Amadeus has identified a way to remove one of the payment intermediaries that Wizz Air uses to access Wirecard. The new configuration ensures more efficient payment processing, which ultimately reduces Wizz Air costs. It also gives the low-cost airline more flexibility in configuring the payment infrastructure to accommodate the specific needs of the airline, "said Bart Tompkins, Managing Director, Payments - Amadeus.
The Amadeus Xchange Payment Platform offers one entry point to access over 70 different payment providers. The Xchange Payment Platform has been designed from scratch to simplify complex payment processes, integrating all parties involved into a single platform and providing secure payment management. In an environment that is rapidly changing and exposed to multiple risks, the Xchange Payment Platform provides efficient processes and, at the same time, a secure environment.
By integrating Amadeus's payment platform with Navitaire New Skies, the Wizz Air passenger services system, the low-cost airline has been directly connected to Wirecard, which is already integrated with the Xchange Payment Platform.
We are thrilled to strengthen our partnership and we are confident that Wirecard's experience in digital financial technology will help us deliver more payment solutions to the travel industry.
