PAYMENTS
US $ 751bn
passenger ticket revenues expected in 2026( source: IATA)
US $ 41bn
total expected combined net profit or airlines in 2026( source: IATA)
CREDIT: MICHAEL H VIA GETTY IMAGES new payment methods, new payment experiences and use cases, paired with a parallel evolution of the legal and regulatory framework. While, at the same time, the central systems that all travel distribution participants rely on are moving at a glacial speed.
Change is very slow and painful. For example, many airline ticket sale scenarios still rely on Mail Order / Telephone Order( MOTO) transactions as the only way to pass payment information through the systems successfully.
These transactions not only fail to comply with the data quality requirements of the card schemes but also trigger higher fees. They also might not be able to satisfy new regulations, such as the pending Payment Service Directive 3( PSD3).
This is a real dilemma that nobody has an answer to right now. Everybody knows about it and everybody in the travel distribution world is relying on it, but at present, it seems almost impossible to do something about it or change the existing core infrastructure.
WHERE DOES AI FIT IN THE GRAND SCHEME OF GROWTH IN AIRLINE PAYMENTS?
» AI – or more specifically, agentic AI – is big for the browse and search phase of the customer journey, but still very much in its infancy when it comes to making the actual payment.
AI is steadily becoming important in payments across areas such as security, operational reliability and the overall
86 April 2026