In a week of heightened uncertainty for the travel industry, resilience and innovation in
payments and distribution were the themes of the conversations at the annual UATP
Airline Distribution Conference 2026, March 10-12 in Barcelona, Spain. The gathering,
held at Barcelona’s SLS Hotel, brought together over 300 travel professionals from
airlines, technology firms, intermediaries and payments providers.
Technology, and particularly artificial intelligence, is transforming the industry at an
accelerated pace. Conference participants predicted the growing acceptance of agentic
commerce — AI-driven customer-led marketing and payments solutions — is likely to
eclipse e-commerce across the travel ecosystem in the near future.
“The travel industry is at an inflection point,” said Ralph Kaiser, president and CEO of
UATP, during his opening remarks. “Travel spend continues to climb, but airline margins
remain thin. Meanwhile, distribution is being redefined: Airlines are increasingly
operating as data-driven retailers, where agentic AI is changing the passenger
experience, navigating towards an era of ‘agentic’ commerce.”
Discussing distribution, the conference presenters agreed NDC and direct connect are
overtaking the legacy systems that have powered the industry for the past half-century.
At the same time, the consensus is for this transition to take some 10 years, with airline
distribution continuing to operate in a hybrid world in the meantime.
Removing friction from the payment experience for travelers while reducing risk for
merchants were common goals for several new product developments highlighted
during the conference. Business Travel Executive got a live demonstration of UATP
Tap™, the patented Card-Present over Internet payments technology announced in
October.
Using EMV cryptography, the solution delivers card-present security and economics,
effectively turning any mobile phone into a secure POS device. UATP is offering the
solution to merchants, creating the opportunity to reduce fraud and increase acceptance
rates.
Flexible payment options were center stage in several of the conference’s
presentations. One solution from payments infrastructure provider Mica, announced last
month, offers multi-tender payment capabilities delivered through UATP’s global
payment platform.
Mica’s patented process allows merchants to combine cards, account-to-account
payments, vouchers, coupons, loyalty currencies and other stored-value instruments.
Credential-less tokenization eliminates stored credentials entirely, removing a primary
target for fraud and account takeover attacks.
The partnership expands UATP’s Ceptor capabilities to all channels delivering a growing
demand for payment optimization across retail and travel verticals. “Our proven
infrastructure, combined with Mica’s technology, helps merchants adopt new payment
models efficiently,” said Kaiser.
“By delivering multi-tender and credential-less capabilities as a network solution, we enable merchants to orchestrate multiple forms of payment within a single transaction, while keeping settlement, reporting and reconciliation fully streamlined across the UATP platform,” Kaiser said.
