CEO of CellPoint Digital, Kristian Gjerding
Kristian Gjerding, CEO of payment orchestration pioneers CellPoint Digital, tells Rob Munro how advanced payment approaches can benefit airlines.
This article was published in the June/July 2025 edition of LARA.
Can you provide specific data on how your technology has had a direct financial impact on airlines’ operations?
CellPoint Digital’s Payment Orchestration Platform overcomes many of the challenges that limit transaction success rates, enabling airlines to boost acceptance, conversions and ultimately revenue. Offering preferred payment methods and features like one-click payments or split payments increases conversion during checkout. And optimising transaction routing and using intelligent fraud screening improves authorisation rates. We’ve also found that our platform’s ability to facilitate a multi-acquirer strategy for airlines, support multi-currency payments and reduce cross-border transaction fees has an overall positive performance impact.
Our internal ROI modelling shows that airlines can expect improvements ranging from two to 13 per cent in payment flow-through, depending on operational complexity and market coverage. For one Tier 1 global airline processing USD 2.4 billion annually, payment page optimisation and storefront consolidation delivered USD 158 million in revenue ROI, equivalent to a 6.6 per cent increase in payment-derived revenue.
How does your platform integrate alternative payment methods (APMs) and what percentage increase in transaction volume have airlines experienced after implementing these solutions?
While credit cards still dominate commercial aviation transactions, we’ve seen travellers’ appetite for APMs surge.
Our platform accelerates the rollout of global or local APMs. With over 160 global APMs pre-integrated into our platform, airlines can quickly activate the payment methods travellers in different markets want, enhancing flexibility. By introducing the region-specific payment methods their passengers prefer, airlines using our platform typically see a three to five per cent uplift in conversions.
For example, one Tier 3 airline used our platform’s full APM hub – including PayMaya, GCash, GrabPay, Alipay, and WeChat Pay – to recover more than 8,000 customer experiences through expanded payment choice and better routing. Our partnership with Avianca enabled the LATAM carrier to add local APMs across 37 markets, resulting in significant volume growth in key regions.
What specific technologies and strategies does CellPoint Digital employ to mitigate fraud risks, and what measurable reduction in fraud rates have your airline clients achieved?
We have developed a cloud-native payment solution that combines advanced pre-authorisation fraud screening with multiple fraud detection systems and rich customer data. We also employ multi-channel, real-time monitoring, AI/ML pattern analysis, adaptive security to minimise end-user friction, and pre-integrated authentication tools like Riskified and 3DS.
This intelligent approach generates measurable results: a Tier 1 carrier with USD 20.7 billion in volume using our Payment Orchestration Platform saw a USD 204 million revenue recovery, primarily through improved authorisation rates and fewer false positives.
This represented 98 per cent of the total ROI from their implementation. We’ve also had other large airline clients leverage our platform’s integrated third-party fraud tools like Cybersource and Accertify to optimise both pre-screening and post-authorisation checks, supporting secure expansion of payment methods like mobile wallets and Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL).
As airlines expand their digital offerings, including ancillaries and loyalty programs, how does CellPoint Digital’s payment orchestration platform support these evolving business models?
We developed a payment platform built on orchestration principles with zero-downtime deployment. With integrated rules engines that determine which forms of payment (including combined payments like points and cash) are displayed to passengers, multi-payer transaction support, comprehensive refund hierarchy management, service-level provider payout capabilities, our payment solutions are purpose-built for modern travel retailing. We also built our platform to grow alongside airlines and travel merchants, with a modular architecture that supports gradual integration based on immediate priorities and future goals.
What emerging payment technologies does CellPoint Digital anticipate having the most significant impact on the airline industry?
AI and automation will play a bigger role in optimising payments while embedded finance will allow travel brands to offer more personalised and flexible payment options at checkout. Stronger collaboration with fintechs and alternative payment providers will also expand choices for travellers.
We also see several technologies having an impact: behavioural biometrics that identify suspicious patterns, advanced tokenisation systems that secure payment data, and deepfake detection capabilities to combat AI-generated identity fraud. Our Payment Orchestration Platform will integrate all of these capabilities as they
