Beijing Capital Airlines, one of China's fastest growing carriers, is targeting international expansion in partnership with payment services experts, Worldpay.

Beijing Capital Airlines has traditionally focused on serving domestic destinations, but in response to China's outbound tourism boom, the company has begun pioneering new, predominantly long-haul routes. Since 2015 the airline has added, or plans to add, a host of new destinations in Europe, Asia, and North America, including Spain, Australia, Vietnam, and Canada, targeting passengers through both direct sales and online travel agencies.

To support its growth, Beijing Capital Airlines needed an experienced partner to help it manage the complexities of international payments and currencies, optimise bookings, protect it from fraud, and integrate with multiple global distribution systems. Worldpay is the airline's sole payment provider for overseas markets, enabling it to connect with multiple platforms in new regions, and saving considerable time and money on integrating new payments methods into its ecommerce platforms.

The airline chose Worldpay as its exclusive payments provider in new markets. Worldpay implemented a solution based around its Online Card Payments and Gateway services, which enable Beijing Capital Airlines to accept a variety of payment methods and currencies. Another key benefit is that the carrier gains access to a wealth of aggregate reporting data for every market, giving Beijing Capital Airlines rich insight into payment approval rates and customers' preferred payment methods. This data enables the airline to save time on analysis and reporting, enabling it to benchmark in-market activity, set sales strategy and better understand passengers' booking behaviour.

After implementing Worldpay's services in November 2016, Beijing Capital Airlines saw successful payments increase by an astonishing 131 per cent.

Prior to 2015, Beijing Capital Airlines focus was almost exclusively on the domestic Chinese market, it only needed to support the most popular payment method, Alipay. As the airline's strategy became more global, it was clear that there was an urgency to accept bookings via other payment methods, such as Visa and Mastercard in various sales channels to create a consistent frictionless booking experience for travellers buying outside of China.

Worldpay has given Beijing Capital Airlines global capabilities, which means that they no longer need to set up new relationships with local providers whenever a new destination is introduced. In the few months working with Worldpay, it is obvious that the airline have gained a reliable partner that can support its ambitious global growth strategy, and scale with them as they grow.

Another key advantage is Worldpay's integration with industry systems such as Accelya, which provides business intelligence to the airline industry, merchandising technology specialists Amadeus, and the International Air Transport Association's (IATA) Billing Settlement Plan (BSP) - as well as with global travel agencies and booking platforms. Because Worldpay takes full responsibility for integrating with partners and platforms, it has significantly accelerated Beijing Capital Airlines' time-to-market, and has removed the costly and time-consuming process of manually integrating these relationships into its own web properties.

Tang Kok San, Country Manager for China, global eCom at Worldpay said, "Beijing Capital Airlines is a great example of an airline that understands how payments can affect the ability to open up new markets quickly and efficiently. At Worldpay, we manage all the complexities inherent in navigating and managing the myriad of relationships on which modern travel businesses depend, from acquiring banks to industry platforms to multiple payment methods and currencies. This enables our customers like Beijing Capital Airlines to enter new markets much faster, giving them a significant advantage over the competition as new routes are deployed."

"Our reliability, reputation and international reach mean that Beijing Capital Airlines can now compete more effectively with other global airlines, swiftly entering new markets while keeping their overheads low. Worldpay works with over 80 of the biggest airlines in the industry, and we look forward to continuing our work with Beijing Capital Airlines to enable it to maximise the opportunities from China's foreign tourism boom, and support the country's citizens as they look to explore new corners of the world," concluded Kok San.

Contributed by Worldpay