Why NDC and Offer and Order Won’t Work Without a New Payment Backbone
In the first article of the series “Airline Retail’s Hidden Battlefield: Why Payments Will Decide the Winners”, we explored how digital payments are essential to unlocking the “sell like Amazon” ambition, and how traditional payment setups often undermine conversion at the final step. The conclusion was that payments are definitely the missing link between retail ambition and real conversion.
Let’s move one step further and explore what happens behind the scenes once airlines embrace modern retailing. While NDC and Offer and Order create the framework for richer offers and more flexible customer journeys, they also introduce a level of payment complexity that traditionalinfrastructures were never designed to handle.
Multi-payer transactions, dynamic order modifications, multiple payment events, alternative payment methods, and multi-party ecosystems require a fundamental rethink of how money moves across the travel value chain.
Key highlights:
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The move to NDC and Offer and Order multiplies payment complexity from a handful of flows to hundreds of variations across methods, payers, timing, MoR and regulations…. something that old stacks simply cannot absorb.
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Payment orchestration becomes the control plane for airline retail, turning each transaction into an active decision about route, method, risk, cost, and order lifecycle instead of a static pipe to a single PSP.
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Airlines that define MoR roles, map their top flows and invest in orchestration turn NDC-Offer and Order from a risky IT program into a scalable, profitable retail model… Those that don’t see promises stall at checkout.
At the center of this transformation lies payment orchestration and the evolution of the Merchant of Record model. This second article argues that payment architecture must become a strategic component of airline retail rather than a technical afterthought. As airlines move from static tickets to dynamic orders, they need intelligent orchestration able to manage complexity, align payment flows with booking lifecycles, and support new business models involving airlines, travel agencies, fintech companies, and third-party content providers. The key message is clear: modern retailing cannot be powered by traditional payment foundations.
But once the backbone is in place, a bigger question emerges: what if payments could do more than just “work”? In the upcoming article, we will move from infrastructure to experience, exploring how payments become a lever for personalization, transforming from a generic checkout step into a fully integrated part of the offer itself. Don’t miss it!
Read Manolo’s second article here: Part 2
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