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Inflight retail is evolving rapidly—but inflight payments are evolving even faster. As airlines expand buy-on-board services, introduce digital marketplaces, and integrate wireless IFE into their commercial strategy, one fact becomes increasingly clear: onboard payments are no longer a simple POS transaction. They are a complex mix of regulation, fraud management, technology constraints, and shifting passenger expectations.
To explore this landscape, we spoke with Forthcode, a technology company specialized in aviation payments and retail systems. Their insights reveal what airlines must understand today—and where inflight payments are heading next.
Inflight payments operate in one of the most unique environments in commerce:
• no stable connectivity,
• regulatory variations from one country to another,
• rapidly evolving fraud behaviors,
• POS devices spread across global fleets with limited remote access.
Yet passengers expect the same seamless experience they have on the ground.
Airlines are therefore caught between two realities: consumer expectations shaped by Apple Pay and Amazon, and the rigid constraints of legacy acquiring, offline flows, and hardware limitations.
This is where specialized providers like Forthcode step in.
A growing issue worldwide is that some local acquiring banks refuse to permit offline authorizations for inflight transactions. This can effectively block airlines from processing onboard sales.
Some vendors attempt to bypass this by using foreign acquirers and acting as the Merchant of Record, but this brings major compliance risks: incorrect VAT treatment, cross-border tax complications, FX obligations, and inconsistent reporting.
According to Forthcode, there is only one fully compliant path: a local acquiring relationship that explicitly supports offline inflight transactions. Everything else introduces long-term financial and regulatory risk.
Fraud remains one of the biggest concerns in inflight retail. Without online authorization, airlines are vulnerable to bad actors who exploit offline terminals.
But experience shows that with the right system in place, airlines can reduce fraudulent transactions by over 80% before they ever reach settlement.
Key techniques include:
– dynamic BIN (Bank Identification Number) rules,
– card-range risk scoring,
– intelligent floor limits,
– pre-flight synchronization of hotlists,
– device-specific velocity rules,
– and automated decline processing after landing.
Many of these capabilities are covered by Forthcode’s patent and have been engineered specifically for offline aviation environments.
Passengers increasingly expect to use mobile wallets for onboard purchases—but aviation’s offline environment makes this difficult.
Mobile wallets rely on tokenized credentials that often require the passenger’s device to connect to the internet to refresh or validate cryptographic tokens. This simply isn’t possible during most flights.
There is, however, a partial path forward.
Certain mobile wallets (depending on issuer rules) do support offline-capable Device-PAN tokens, enabling transactions without real-time access. But acceptance rates vary dramatically because not all issuers or wallet providers support offline usage.
In other words: wallet payments inflight are possible, but inconsistent, and won’t reach their full potential until real-time inflight connectivity becomes the norm.
Forthcode expects that inflight payments will gradually move toward a fully connected, real-time ecosystem, but not uniformly across all fleets and airlines.
Many carriers still operate older aircraft or partial-coverage routes where real-time payment processing isn’t feasible. Because of this, offline and partially connected flows will remain essential for years to come.
The industry is therefore entering a hybrid phase:
– Offline systems will continue to be refined to maximize reliability and fraud protection.
– Real-time payment modules will emerge on aircraft with advanced IFC upgrades.
– Orchestration layers will determine automatically whether a transaction should route offline or online.
In other words, for airlines, the priority is to invest in future-proof platforms that support both worlds.
Inflight payments used to be a “back-office problem.” Today they sit at the crossroads of:
– airline retail strategies,
– digital transformation,
– regulatory compliance,
– and overall passenger experience.
Modernizing this layer enables airlines to:
– increase onboard revenue,
– reduce fraud losses,
– expand payment methods,
– streamline catering and retail operations,
– and prepare for fully connected commerce.
With inflight marketplaces, destination shopping, digital advertising, and loyalty-linked purchases on the rise, payments are now central to the entire inflight digital ecosystem—including IFE and wireless IFE.
Inflight commerce is evolving fast. Connectivity is rising, expectations are shifting, and airlines want to expand their onboard retail strategies. But none of that works without a solid, secure, compliant inflight payment foundation.
Forthcode’s insights make one thing clear: airlines must treat inflight payments not as an operational detail, but as a strategic layer that shapes revenue, trust, innovation, and passenger experience.
If your airline is exploring new ways to integrate payment logic into your IFE, retail platform, or wireless IFE portal, PXCom can help design a future-proof approach that fits your fleet and your ambitions.
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