Wallets, A2A and BNPL: payment methods that convert

Checkout as a silent leak

In travel, a meaningful share of abandonment happens after the customer has decided to buy: at the payment step. Declines, failed authentication, missing methods or clumsy customer identification destroy sales the rest of the funnel had already won. That is why it pays to measure funnel events in detail at this stage, not just overall conversion.

The World Aviation Festival 2026 agenda reflects this with sessions on payments beyond cards, flexible payments as a revenue driver, winning global approval rates and why so many travel checkouts fail because of identity.

What each family of methods brings

Wallets

Apple Pay, Google Pay and local wallets reduce friction on mobile and usually improve authentication. Their impact grows with the weight of the app and returning traffic.

Account-to-account (A2A) payments

Instant transfers and local schemes can reduce costs and chargebacks. In some markets they are the preferred method; in others they are barely used. The decision must be made country by country.

Flexible payments and BNPL

Instalments or book-now-pay-later increase average order value and conversion on high-value purchases such as holidays or family trips. They require clear expiry and risk rules, and fit well with selling flight plus hotel from the direct channel.

Approval: the most underrated lever

Before adding methods, most businesses gain more by improving approval on the ones they already have: local acquirer routing, smart retries, network tokens and authentication that only adds friction when risk justifies it. That is the core of good payment orchestration.

Identity and checkout

Many failures are not payment failures but identity failures: badly captured traveller data, duplicate accounts or expiring sessions. Recognising the customer, prefilling data and storing tokenised methods reduces errors and speeds up purchase, just as when reducing hotel booking abandonment.

How to prioritise

1. Analyse abandonment by market and device at the payment step. That is where the gaps show up.

2. Quantify legitimate declines. Every point of approval recovered is immediate revenue.

3. Choose methods by country, not globally. What matters in Brazil does not matter in Germany.

4. Measure total cost per method. Fees, chargebacks, fraud and reconciliation effort.

5. Test with controlled experiments. The order and presentation of methods also affect conversion.

Metrics that matter

• Payment-step conversion by market and method.

• Approval rate for legitimate transactions.

• Net cost per approved transaction.

• Average order value with and without flexible payment.

• Chargeback and refund rate by method.

Conclusion

Alternative payment methods are a conversion tool when they match what each market expects and are managed with data. Starting with better approval, deciding by country and measuring total cost keeps checkout from becoming a wall of logos with no impact on sales.

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