Competition in the field of travel payment has continued to increase recently. Many cross-border payment companies such as Ant International, Antom, Lianlian Digital, PingPong, and Photonics have successively launched solutions related to travel payment. Independent third-party payment institutions such as Yibao, Huifu, Helibao, and Yisheng Pay, which have been deeply involved in the field for many years, are also continuing to iterate their service capabilities. The industry may set off a new wave of competition.
The core reason why Air Travel Payment has become the core business base of payment institutions is that digitization in this field started early, and it took advantage of the trend of development of electronic payment.
In 2006, my country’s civil aviation fully implemented electronic tickets, offline ticketing outlets and ticketing agents accelerated their transformation to online, and all transactions became electronic.
At that time, the banking system was constrained by factors such as high chargeback risks, weak account sharing capabilities, limited profit margins, and strict compliance regulatory requirements. It was unable to launch a mature payment solution suitable for aviation and travel scenarios. This coincided with the critical window period for the rise of domestic third-party payment. After payment institutions and airlines reached cooperation, due to factors such as the difficulty of data migration and the deep embedding of the system into the internal management system, the cooperation between the two parties was extremely sticky, and it also brought a stable and continuous source of income to the payment institution.
The current air travel scene is no longer limited to a single air ticket booking link. Various scenarios such as travel services, hotel accommodation, OTA (online travel platform), travel insurance, customized travel plans, tax refund payment, airport consumption, VIP membership system, etc. are all included in the air travel ecological category. As long as there is demand for air travel, ticket purchase is just the beginning. The entire process from travel to return will derive various payment needs. Air travel itself is a huge market.
Public data from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism show that in 2025, there will be 148.36 million outbound trips by mainland residents, a year-on-year increase of 20.8%; there will be 154.5 million inbound tourists, a year-on-year increase of 17.1%.
In the field of civil aviation, my country’s civil aviation passenger transport volume will reach 770 million in 2025, covering domestic and international flights.
Overall, air travel payment relies on the main line of air travel, connecting all consumption scenarios such as food, accommodation, and transportation. It is also a high-quality payment track for upstream and downstream enterprises in the air travel industry chain.
In this round of air travel payment craze, each institution has its own focus: the traditional air travel payment leader focuses on deepening airline services and improving comprehensive service capabilities. Yibao has recently increased its focus on global air travel accounts, foreign card acquiring and other businesses; Helibao has continued to optimize air travel payment solutions in the past two years, focusing on B2B smart ledger + AI credit on the basis of integration of collection and payment management, to achieve full cross-border multi-currency clearing.
Coverage; Huifu upgraded the original airline payment brand to “Huihanglv”, using the Dougong PaaS platform as the technical base to upgrade capabilities such as scene aggregation and intelligent fund management, and also launched a global airline business business E-card to enhance payment flexibility; Yisheng Pay gradually transformed from an air ticket payment tool to an airline full-stack payment service provider, while consolidating the original cooperation resources while actively expanding customers of small and medium-sized airlines and regional airlines.
According to industry statistics, there are a total of 65 domestic airlines, and leading payment institutions have covered most airlines. Due to requirements such as payment stability, scenario splitting, and high system availability, airlines generally connect to multiple payment channels, and banks continue to increase their presence. The domestic airline payment market has basically become saturated. Under this background, exploring overseas airline resources and arranging small and medium-sized customers in the middle and lower reaches of the industry chain have become new growth directions for payment institutions, among which VCC virtual cards have become the core product form for entry into the airline travel payment industry.
The “LianLian Travel QuickPass VCC” launched by Lianlian Digital focuses on extremely fast second-hand payments in the aviation and travel scenarios; the one-stop global payment solution for the aviation and travel industry released by PingPong takes accounts as the core and uses virtual cards as an important implementation tool; PhotonEasy’s aviation and travel payment solution focuses on PhotonPay photonic cards, which supports enterprises to flexibly issue cards in batches. Limits and usage rights can be set separately by routes, suppliers, projects, and teams, effectively improving the payment efficiency of high-frequency transactions for aviation and travel enterprises.
The resource threshold of leading airlines is high, and not all payment institutions can enter. However, there are a large number of small and medium-sized players in the industry chain such as ticketing agencies, OTAs, and TMCs. The overlay industry has gone through multiple rounds of reshuffles, and the market payment demand is being reconstructed.
The relevant person in charge of a travel brand in South China said frankly: “Before the epidemic, the problem of low payment efficiency of travel agencies was not prominent. Going to the bank offline can solve the funding problem; during the epidemic, the industry’s passenger flow shrank, and the pressure for corporate survival increased. Cost reduction and efficiency increase became a rigid need, which directly forced travel agencies to accelerate the upgrade of the payment system.” Relevant data shows that after three years of epidemic impact, the number of national tourism employees has shrunk significantly, but in the post-epidemic era, the global tourism market has ushered in a strong recovery. In 202
The number of travel agencies nationwide was 32,603 at the end of 2025, and has increased to 70,354 by the end of 2025, an increase of more than 115%; the outbound tourism market is also growing rapidly, with approximately 101 million Chinese outbound tourists in 2023, and 20
It increased to 168 million in 25 years, an increase of more than 66%; the domestic business travel market has rapidly recovered in the post-epidemic stage, and its scale is close to its peak in 2019. It is expected to maintain a stable growth of 7% to 9% in the next three years, and the market space continues to expand.
The surge in the number of travel agencies and the continued rise in outbound tourism are the core motivations for many cross-border payment companies to get together to deploy air travel payment.
In the outbound travel business, the preparation of travel routes involves the procurement of multiple links such as air tickets, hotels, catering, and transportation. Overseas market rules are clear. Once payment is overdue, booked hotels and services will be cancelled, and mistakes in a single link will disrupt the entire travel route. Therefore, stable payment, fast payment, and low overall cost have become the core needs of outbound travel agencies, and the VCC virtual card precisely matches these needs.
A relevant person in charge of a VCC payment company revealed that the advantages of enterprise-level VCC are mainly reflected in three points: first, flexibility, allowing B-side payment to have a user experience close to that of C-side, adapting to high-frequency and fragmented payment scenarios such as tickets, air tickets, transportation, hotels, etc.; second, cost reduction and efficiency improvement, relying on the mature rebate and points system of international card organizations, effectively reducing comprehensive payment costs; third, stability and security. Compared with personal virtual cards, enterprise-level VCC is less prone to BIN blocking and card locking problems, ensuring smooth business operation.
Under the wave of globalization and China’s overseas expansion, the aviation industry is undergoing industrial upgrading. In order to meet the needs of cross-border payment and global payment, the payment industry is also ushering in new development opportunities.
