SITA Solves the Multi-Merchant Challenge for Payment Acceptance at Airports

SITA has launched the first payment solution which addresses the overall need for airlines to be able to accept payments securely at airports when using a shared IT infrastructure.

SITA AirportConnect Common Use Payment Service enables payment transactions by multiple airlines on one single payment terminal.

Most notably, this is possible with any, and all, of the departure control systems the airlines choose to use.

Airlines use common-use or shared IT infrastructure at airports around the world and this ground-breaking solution has been developed by SITA to support airlines that are seeking to accept payments at common-use check-in desks, kiosks and bagdrop areas for baggage fees, upgrades, and other ancillary charges.

SITA’s new solution uniquely combines P2PE tech, with Europay, Mastercard, Visa, and Payment Card Industry compliant chip card payment terminals, apps and processes, to enable multiple merchants to use the same terminal while meeting PCI security standards.

SITA has implemented this service with a major European airline at a common-use airport where rigorous testing proved the usefulness of the encryption technology for chip, magnetic stripe and contactless card payment transactions.

Barbara Dalibard, CEO, SITA, said: “This new service, integrated with our SITA AirportConnect platform, allows airlines, airports and other air transport industry stakeholders to accept credit card payments in a common-use environment in line with Payment Card Industry standards. Our service features point-to-point encryption to provide a powerful, flexible solution for all stakeholders to ensure the protection of customer data.”

Peter Galvin, Vice President Strategy at Thales e-Security said: “Thales’s extensive expertise and leadership in the payment security market, enriched by our long-standing partnerships with leading payments processing vendors, allows us to help innovators such as SITA deliver the high levels of performance and security required for payment processing.”