Hahnair’ s Head of Payments, Benjamin Sibbald, discusses how the leader in airline distribution is transforming payment into a strategic pillar across 190 markets with its fintech partnerships
HAHNAIR
Hahnair’ s Head of Payments, Benjamin Sibbald, discusses how the leader in airline distribution is transforming payment into a strategic pillar across 190 markets with its fintech partnerships
Benjamin Sibbald didn’ t plan to revolutionise airline payments when he moved from London to Germany in the run-up to Brexit. The Head of Payments at Hahnair, the leading global provider of airline distribution solutions, made the leap partly out of circumstance and partly out of ambition. His wife had job offers in both Cambridge and Germany, and Benjamin, who had always wanted to explore life overseas, was keen to try life abroad before potential doors closed.
Now, having been happily settled in a village south of Frankfurt for the best part of a decade, Benjamin has spent the past year transforming how one of the world’ s most extensive airline networks handles payments. His journey into finance began, as he puts it,“ by luck” – starting in an outbound call centre before moving through retail banking at HSBC, then corporate banking, and finally payments with CashFlows. That diverse background now is the foundation of his approach to one of the industry’ s most complex challenges.
German travel giant Hahnair operates at a scale that few companies can match. The distribution provider connects more than 350 airlines
42 February 2026