Airline payments: 2025 in review

From the expansion of instalment payments to early experiments with AI-powered commerce, 2025 brought both exciting progress and lessons about where payment innovation for airlines is heading.

I joined Worldpay in 2025 after two decades in the airline industry. That experience gave me a unique perspective on the intricate mechanics of airline payment operations.

Flexible payments democratise air travel

One tangible shift was the growing availability of buy now, pay later. BNPL by late 2024 had gained significant traction, with at least 31 airlines offering Uplift and major carriers like United, Emirates and Southwest offering integrated instalment options. In 2025, though, it truly went mainstream.

The appeal is straightforward. High ticket prices can be a genuine barrier to booking, particularly for leisure travelers. BNPL removes this obstacle while transferring credit risk to specialist providers that pay airlines upfront. The commercial logic is sound: Airlines capture bookings they might otherwise lose, avoid chargebacks and reach markets with lower credit-card penetration. In Latin America, for instance, instalment payments are not a novelty but a cultural expectation.

What stood out for me in 2025 was the strategic partnership between Affirm and UATP. By integrating into the UATP network, Affirm created a turnkey global solution for airlines. This signals that BNPL has moved beyond being a marketing gimmick to core payment infrastructure. Airlines that offered these programs responsibly, with transparent terms and genuine interest-free options, found they could expand their customer base without assuming additional credit risk.

Airlines as fintechs

Perhaps the boldest development of 2025 was seeing airlines move into financial services. Turkish Airlines launched TKPAY in late 2025 under a central bank payment licence, creating a fully-fledged digital wallet that handles multicurrency accounts, QR code payments and even converts loyalty miles into cash.

This is not simply a loyalty program with stored value. TKPAY positions Turkish Airlines as a payments provider, competing in the broader financial technology space while deepening customer loyalty. The reported 20,000 active users within months of launch suggests genuine demand for airline-branded financial products, particularly when combined with generous cashback promotions.

Other carriers in APAC pursued similar paths, using digital wallets to retain refund credits, facilitate future bookings and reduce payment-processing costs by keeping transactions functionally in-house. The strategic calculus is compelling: capture more customer spending, generate revenue through interchange or merchant commissions and gather customer data beyond flight bookings.

The question is whether most airlines have the regulatory appetite, technical capability and risk tolerance to become licenced financial institutions. For those that do, the payoff could be substantial.

Virtual cards transform B2B

Consumer-facing innovations grabbed the headlines, but business-to-business travel payments saw a quieter revolution. Virtual credit cards became the dominant settlement method between online travel agencies and airlines, offering enhanced security, automated reconciliation and rich transaction data.

Worldpay’s partnership with Mastercard on a virtual card program for UK and European travel agents exemplified this shift. By enabling agencies to issue VCCs in multiple currencies and with dynamic product codes, the platform improved cash flow for distributors while ensuring that airlines received guaranteed payment with detailed booking references embedded in each transaction.

For airlines, this meant more third-party sales settled via card rather than the traditional IATA BSP or ARC rails. The trade-off was accepting higher interchange fees on corporate card products, but the security and automation benefits made virtual cards compelling for B2B travel payments.

Refunds and compensation: From grudging to instant

Building on the U.S. Department of Transportation’s 2024 mandate for automatic cash refunds within seven business days for cancelled flights, 2025 saw airlines racing to implement real-time payout technologies.

Solutions using Visa Direct and Mastercard Send enabled airlines to push funds instantly to passengers’ debit cards, turning service recovery into a potential loyalty moment.

Some carriers replaced vouchers with prepaid debit cards, loaded with exact compensation amounts and issued by cashless kiosks at airports. The operational benefits include no cash handling, faster resolution and valuable data on how passengers spend disruption compensation.

The agentic commerce question: Myth or reality?

The most hyped development in booking is agentic AI, which allows travelers to book and pay for flights conversationally using artificial intelligence. Our research indicated 73% of global consumers are open to letting AI agents browse for and purchase on their behalf.

While expecting AI agents to handle complex booking decisions in the near term is premature, this doesn’t mean airlines should ignore agentic commerce. The technology will evolve, and carriers must ensure their inventory is accessible via APIs, that their payment systems support tokenized transactions, and they participate in emerging standards.

Looking ahead

The payment innovations of 2025 are structural shifts that may demand a strategic response.

Payments have moved from being a cost center to a strategic lever for growth, customer loyalty and efficiency. Airlines that treat payment innovation as a priority can capture new customers, reduce processing costs and build stronger relationships with travellers. Carriers that have embraced these changes may find themselves well-positioned to compete in 2026 – while those relying on outdated payment infrastructure may find it harder to keep pace.

Find out more about Worldpay for airlines, or get in touch.

Ajish Morris is a senior strategy manager for airlines at Worldpay and has over two decades of experience at full-service and low-cost airlines in the Asia-Pacific region. He also teaches at Singapore University of Social Sciences, where he leads undergraduate tracks in aviation management, airline marketing, and airline operations and planning.