Ep 2: How Hands In drives revenue growth for airlines through split payments - with Garth Lund and Sam Flynn

Airlines typically lose around 5% of direct sales due to insufficient funds on the customer's credit card.  Garth Lund speaks with Sam Flynn, founder of Hands In, about how the paytech start-up is helping airlines recover millions of euros in transaction revenue using split payments. 

(00:38) Intro to Hands In and split payments

(05:00) The revenue upside for airlines from split payments

(06:58) Air Europa case study

(15:14) How split payments complement Buy Now Pay Later products

(25:32) Broader fintech innovation opportunities for airlines

(29:36) Split payments in other industries

Check out Hands In for yourself at handsin.com

Published by The Engine Cowl 

Published by The Engine Cowl 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome to the Airline Tech Podcast. I'm Garflund. In today's episode, I'll be speaking with Sam Flynn, founder of Hands In, a London-based startup delivering split payments for airlines. Did you know that a typical airline uses 10 to 15% of its transactions due to credit card declines? And about 40% of those declines are due to insufficient funds. That's just one of the challenges that Sam and the Hands In team are looking to solve. So keep listening to find out how one airline is already using Hands In to recover tens of millions of euros in revenue. Hello. So maybe to start off with, for those who aren't already aware, can you just give us a brief explanation of what are split payments and what are the pain points you're trying to solve? Sure.

SPEAKER_01 0:49

So split payments, as we're defining it, is the ability for a traveller to split a single transaction across multiple cards, multiple methods, and multiple payers. So some use cases could be for the multiple card approach, maybe a traveller combining a corporate card that they might get from, for example, your time at Flair, and then a personal card into one consolidated booking, maybe for the difference between economy or economy premium or potentially business. Outside of that, what we see with the combining cards and methods, it's a great use case to tackle this major problem in the travel industry of insufficient funds, where on card sales, for the average airline that we talk to, they're losing up to around 5% of direct channel revenue, specifically lost at checkout due to insufficient fund declines. And that is just where a traveller heads to checkout, tries to pay, can't pay, and their bank or acquire rejects that because they don't have enough money. 42% of all airline payment declines cited by MasterCard in 23, and I believe 24 was specifically due to insufficient funds. So this is a big problem that airlines are aware of. And combining split tender to solve this problem allows people to reduce this notion of insufficient funds, where you can combine two or more cards or maybe wallet payments and a BMPL into one booking to drive up your affordability for a transaction. And the same somewhat applies to the group payment use case because this is where myself and my co-founder Rao decided to found the business. We were young students, no credit card, 999 in the overdraft, and we love to travel. Very typical Gen Z problem. So we were struggling with affordability, not necessarily directly at checkout, but kind of like a pre-checkout experience between fellow group members. And it was obviously always difficult to organize group travel. So myself, I came up with the idea of what if we could create a product that could split the cost of my travel booking directly at the checkout in the way that I would want it to be, whether I'm buying airline flights and split it at the ticket level or a vacation rental, maybe split it equally between all of the travelers that are going, and it's stemmed from there. But the group product has a slightly different use case when we talk about split payments to the other two, which is the multicard and method products. That's really tackling this issue for airlines and travel businesses around insufficient funds. The group product does, but it's more creating a more transformative way to pay, especially if you've got a carrier or a business that's selling actively towards groups, or maybe wants to disrupt what they think is the group status quo, because Garth, you'll know, groups in the airline business has been defined as pack size nine plus. What Hands In is doing when it comes to split payments and defining this category is saying there's four mates that want to just head to Waibefer for a weekend, they can split the cost of that travel. And for the first time, you can sit with your friends, but with your friends, and split the payment. That's sort of the motto of that product. Um, so we've developed the business quite a bit over time, and I think a really like split payments is not a new thing when it comes to the airline industry. But what Hans In has done is imagine it was on a cabinet shelf and there's dust on it. You know, we've polished it up, we've made it, you know, enterprise ready, and now we're bringing it back to the forefront of uh the travel payment conversation.

SPEAKER_00 4:08

Okay, got it. So to be very clear, when we talk about split payments, this is not by now pay later, where you're taking a single payment and spreading it over time, you're taking a payment at a point in time and spreading it over multiple cards, either the same person's card or different people's cards, right?

SPEAKER_01 4:24

Correct, but also multiple payment methods. So this is something that we've added to our solution. So we originally started off with multiple cards, and then now we've combining different payment methods. So if someone wanted to split a payment across maybe wallet like Alipay, Google Pay, Apple Pay, a BMPL, maybe Afterpay, Kalana, Zip2 as an example, and then Card, they can now do that with our system as well.

SPEAKER_00 4:50

Okay, got it. So you mentioned there that 5% roughly of airlines transactions are declined due to insufficient funds. Can you walk us through a bit of the math of what that looks like for a typical airline, how you can help, what percentage can you recover, what's essentially the revenue benefit for an airline that's using hands-in?

SPEAKER_01 5:11

Yeah, so from the airlines that we work with or that we've done uh workshops with to understand their numbers, the average payment decline, so this is just of all declines in general, ranges between, I would say, some 10 to 15%. The average ballpark is around 12%. And then in terms of what's failing specifically due to insufficient funds within those decline codes is around 42 to 44% from what we've seen on average. So if you work the maths backwards, if you've got an airline doing 100 million a month in direct channel revenue, 12% is lost, 42% of that 12% is due to insufficient funds. That's around about 5 million, 60 million per year, 100 million from 5 million, you've got your 5% number. We are working with a tier one carrier in the Middle East this year, where their numbers are actually around 7%. Uh Air Europa, from what we saw, it was underneath that 5% number, just about. So there's a range of how much is being lost to different carriers based on different markets with different inventory that they sell as well. So whilst the picture I would say is up to around 5% and the maths, you can see how I broke that down, how that makes sense. One thing that's probably important to note for different audiences and different businesses is that based on different markets that you may be penetrating, you may see higher rates, like especially in Latin America, where the limits are very low. Okay. Versus more mature markets, maybe like the US or Europe, the rates might be slightly lower. However, in the US, car penetration is really high, versus in APAC, car penetration is quite low. So you can see how we've then decided to develop the product from just card to then also combining methods as well and doing things such as loyalty points. But to your points on recovery, so most people know when it comes to the store of hands-in and I think split payments that Air Europa has really helped pioneer this alongside our company. We've done around 30 million in incremental revenue with them today. But more than 50% of that has come specifically due to rescuing transactions that were failing on insufficient funds. So it's above around 10 million, 10 to 12 million that we've recovered for them on a soft decline for insufficient funds, where they were losing a multi, multi-eight-figure sum. In terms of the win-back rate, it depends on different markets, but it's up to around about 20%. Because something that we've also done with our split payment solution, and this is why we think we were the best in the business in terms of what we have, is when we first launched the multi-card approach of this split payment scenario, we found that 60% of the usage we were getting came from a decline on another method, meaning if you headed to checkout, you tried to pay of a single card, you failed, you would come to us. So what we created alongside our traditional payment method approach of splitting it across cards and methods, is a listening device that when a transaction failed, specifically due to insufficient funds, Air Europa would send us that data and we would provide a pop-up that would stop the traveller in their tracks before they abandon the cart and say, hey, you're insufficient. If you want to use split payments, you can help recover this transaction. When they click that, it redirects back through to our payment method. So now we're not just capturing the 60%, we're capturing the 40%. And that win back rate of up to 20%, the 10 million number, is directly where we're tracking those KPIs from. So hopefully it makes a bit more sense for those listening on.

SPEAKER_00 8:38

Sounds good. You mentioned there the differences across geography, Platam versus Europe, let's say. Do you also see differences in types of bookings, let's say a solo traveller versus a family versus a group booking, which might be 10, 20 people?

SPEAKER_01 8:54

So with a group booking, definitely. Um sports teams, uh, that can be common. School groups, you mentioned families and friends, those are the common use cases. And the average transaction value that we see for a traditional group booking is around about um, I'd say US dollars are at two and a half. For a multi-card booking, it's around about a thousand. Okay. Um, so it's much higher than what would be a you know a single uh person transaction. So definitely the solo travelers, whilst they can use our products, especially the multi-card and multi-method, to help recover transactions that were failing on insufficient funds. I think for airlines and travel businesses to note, this is definitely something that fits into like a high-intent booking scenario because the ATV is much higher than like for Air Europa there. ATV on a single car payment is around about 200, 300 euros. With us, again, it's you know, five times higher than that. With a group product, it's eight times higher than that. So just to give some more insight there in terms of who might be using this. But again, we've also learned as we've launched this product, lots of interesting things around, like I mentioned at the start, a corporate traveller that might want to apply their corporate card and then do versus the upgrade post-booking, just do it at checkout and lock in the price directly at the point of sale. We're seeing a lot of that as well. Um, but the major use case always does stem back to insufficient funds. And luckily for us and businesses, there's measurable insights that we can measure in terms of the revenue uplift.

SPEAKER_00 10:21

Okay. You've been live with Europa since the middle of 2024, so that's around 18 months now. What have been kind of the key learnings from that experience? Um, and can you kind of talk us through that as a case study essentially for hands-in?

SPEAKER_01 10:37

Yeah, so I'll tell the story that will then enlighten the case study. So initially, we started with the group product. We launched that for a month, we A-B tested different flows in terms of the front-end experience to drive the highest conversion rate on a booking. Um, so what we learned is to actually make the lead booker who starts a group payment product enter in their card details first. We would pre-authorize that amount. So we're not actually charging them yet. So you, GAF would head in, you've got your four tickets. We were getting a Europa to send us the flight and itinerary data. So all of your tickets are in sort of one screening page, and your lead passenger and your secondary passengers are there as well. And then you would enter in your card details, you're not charged at that point. You share a link where it would be WhatsApp, QR code, email, text message, you receive that and other peers, and they all join together and pay in real time. But originally we had it where the lead passenger would start a uh transaction. They wouldn't enter in their card details until the very end. They would do the splitting, they would do the sharing, and then, but we changed that. And we saw a jump in our success rate on the first authorization from around quite low, like 60%, up to now we've got it to around 85% with that product, which is pretty good. So, what it means is that when a lead passenger starts a group payment, they enter in their card details, we've got an 85% chance of getting the rest of the group members through. Just some more insights on the group product. So we initially with Air Europa started off with a 30-minute checkout window. They've now extended that to two hours. And because of that extension, that has then also led to a conversion rate uplift as well. We're working with them now to extend this to 24 hours and probably even add in maybe a new ancillary revenue stream for them, like what Lufanza Group does, where you can reserve a booking for a spec set period of time, the inventory is held, and then you can allow groups to come and join and pay. That's something that we're in the works of them now. Then after that, I would say four to five months later, we launched the multi-card product. And as I mentioned, when we launched that, what we were seeing is that most of the usage we were getting was coming from a decline on another method. So then that's when we decided to create our pop-up product that was listening to those decline codes and basically routing them straight back to split payments across multiple cards when they were failing on insufficient funds. So versus just getting the 60% usage of insufficient funds, we're trying to capture the rest of the basket size. And again, for those that click the pop-up, uh 20%, roughly up to 20% of them are clicking through. And then for the multi-card solution, in terms of the success rate there, it's around about 95%. So once we get the first authorization through, and this does include 3DS as well, we've got a 95% of getting all of the rest of the authorizations through, whether it be two cards or three cards. Okay. In terms of long haul, short haul flights, there's not really like a major difference between um what we've learned with A Europa and in using our product for those services. The main thing that we've learned is that this is definitely for both the group product and the multi-card a high intent product. So those those types of inventory that are going to be uh much more expensive. But we also think that our service has been uh key in driving that ATV because you can combine two credit cards versus one for your purchase or eight people versus one for your purchase, right? Um, pack size for the group product, uh you know you mentioned around group pack size is typically 20 plus, but that you see is on the non-direct channel. Our group product with Air Europa is on their direct channel only, same with all of our other methods at the minute. Pack size for the group product is ranges kind of between four to six, so it's perfect for those like families that are going away and then friends that are wanting to split payments. And then how the multi-method came about was not necessarily through Air Europa. Uh, we're launching, uh, I won't be able to say the name, but uh, Australia's largest OTA. And we again we were like, right, here's payments, here's hands-in, multicon. And they were like, well, our car penetration rate isn't as high as what you see in Europe. It's around about 30%. BMPLs here are super popular, PayPal and other wallet payments are popular. Could you take the same mechanism and use multiple methods to uh combine uh these purchases? And now we're starting that journey for the business as well. So it'll be interesting to see what insights we get from that. They're launching in April. So by the time this comes out, um, I imagine that there may be some insight on exactly who that is. Um but it's very, very exciting.

SPEAKER_00 15:14

We've touched on buy now pay later a couple times, either as a payment method or kind of how it is a distinct product versus split payments. I think buy now, pay later tends to get a lot more attention than split payments. Even preparing for this interview, um, I Googled split payments for airlines, and the first page of results is purely buy now pay later products. Why do you think BNPL's got so much attention and split payments is a little bit more under the radar, I would say. I mean, even at Flare, we launched a buy now pay later product, but I don't think we really considered at the time split payments.

SPEAKER_01 15:52

I think what we're doing, whether it be the group product and the multicolor method, it's obviously very unique. Um, it's not something that I think is, as you mentioned, uh what you would think would be a mainstream form of payment, but it's changing. Uh I think that narrative to where uh split payments as to how we're defining, especially in the travel ecosystem, needs to be. Obviously, BMPL kind of around like the mid-2010s have been on a huge run in terms of their market dominance. Not only necessarily, well, I don't believe they were really into travel until kind of the late 2010s, early 2020s, because everything had to move online, um, but obviously in retail. So we're very early, and split payments as a narrative is very early into its journey. We're much like when Kalana started, you know, just at the very start, figuring out their first initial few use cases, which for us is clearly travel. For them, it was retail. Outside of what that product does, which is fantastic in terms of lending you the money that you might not necessarily have at that point and allowing you to pay it over time for high-intent bookings that might be six to nine months out from departure, Kalana, Kalana Afterpay, all of the different services out there, Flexpay, they can create a great um alternative to that. I don't necessarily think though, and from what we've seen when talking to airlines, that whilst it eats into the pie of insufficient funds, it doesn't solve it completely. And that's clear, otherwise, our business and split payments wouldn't exist. So we're just adding to this what what what these BMPLs do is they do address is insufficient funds, but I think they more address cash flow constraints. Because much like when you book a package holiday, you pay a deposit and you can pay a set amount over time, I think that's where the traveller loves using a BMPL or an instalment solution for paying that over time, which is also something we're developing at the minute, by the way, and a different use case that I know we'll touch on to later. But I think when you combine multiple cards, methods, or group, right? Group is really interesting because it's just a completely transformative new way to pay that I don't think quite it again, it touches on the same points of insufficient funds, cash flow issues, and a new way to pay for a younger generation, but it's doing it in again a very unique way. And when sometimes things are unique, they're not mainstream, not noticed. The multi-card again addresses a very specific issue of insufficient funds because it's doing it directly at the point of sell, and where we've extended it further when it listens to those decline codes and now can provide ability to do split tender, not only across card and methods, that's where our narrative of what split payments can be and decline recovery has changed. So we're evolving all the time, and there are other providers that will venture into, I feel like what we've pioneered when it comes to split payments, and they'll evolve it even further, and we may have to catch up and whatever it may be. But I think for those reasons of, you know, they've got the first move advantage, they've built a solid portfolio and success rate in the retail sector, they're merging into travel. I still don't think, though, that they've got too much mainstream adoption. Like they work with a lot of airlines. Uh, there was a report from uh Edgar Dunn that found that 80% of travelers for airlines are demanding split payments, which we're looped into that, but only 27% of airlines adopt them. And I think there's hesitancy because of how expensive BMPO is as well. Um, right, they typically may take uh the merchant of record. Um, and you know, uh from what I hear from airlines as a low margin industry, if uh an airline is making sort of an average net margin 5 to 7% on a seat, and then you've got a BMPO that's charging quite a few high basis points of that, that deters the business case away from them doing that, and they just want to focus on getting forms of payment through that can allow travelers to pay. With us, we don't charge as much as that. You know, we sit on top of the uh airlines' existing payment routes. So we're not doing what Kalana or the other services may be doing from a payment perspective, which is the full acquiring settlement and being the merchant of record, hands-in sits as uh a layer on top of those existing routes to provide split payment technology at the front end and still give you all of the benefits of eating into insufficient funds. So as you can see, there's many different reasons, um, but it doesn't necessarily mean that the way that we're defining it, whilst new is not part of that conversation, and if I I more think it's a separate conversation to what BMPL does.

SPEAKER_00 20:39

If an airline is listening to this episode and they're thinking, okay, split payment sounds great, they get the revenue benefit, but they're worried about the complexity of the implementation. How fast do you typically go live? Is it a very complex integration? Kind of what goes into that?

SPEAKER_01 20:56

Yeah, so with us, it all depends on how your checkout page or hosted payment page is managed. Some airlines prefer to manage this themselves. Some other airlines will have this managed with a partner. Air Europa is a good example of someone who managed their payment page themselves. And what that means for airlines and travel businesses listening is that the methods that they decided to connect, which was Open Banking, BMPL, and us, they do that independently of another provider. If you're listening to this and you're not sure about that, speak to your payments manager and they'll tell you how you connect APMs. What I see is around 20%, probably I would say, of the airline market, tier one to tier three, will manage their own hosted pace. The bigger they are, the more likely they are to do that as well and have their own internal payment infrastructure. Iberia and the Iberia Payments platform is a great example of that. But then the other 80% will be managed through providers. So these might be payment orchestration platforms like a Cell Point Digital and Output. Page from Amadeus, Duana, Uno as an example, Apex Solutions, where they'll manage the hosted page and connect methods for them. So what we've decided to do is do a twofold approach where we've got API documentation that can allow an airline, if they wanted to, to do it independently. For Air Europa, across both products, it took them just under around two months to implement and test and get it live on their payment page. When you go for a partner, I would half those man uh days in terms of development hours to do the integration. Um, because typically what we've done with the likes of those names and UATP is make it completely plug and play. So accessible as a method where you just simply click split payments by hands-in, whether it'd be one of the three options, and it's loaded onto your checkout page and you can publish. So dependent on the partner, it's probably up to half of the development time like we're going through an implementation right now of a tier one airline with uh in the Middle East with one of those names and launching several others this year, where they've given us uh a timeline of around 20 mandates to launch a solution through the platform. So it's very quick when it's done for a partner. Not to say that it can't be quick when it's done through an airline independently, it would be something that we would just have to assess on a case-by-case basis because um, you know, what we see as a as any travel tech provider, it's not the integration itself that's complex, it's prioritization and getting on that roadmap because there's a and you'll know this card, there is a conveyor belt of this high things to do and resources of only this. So that's why, again, going through partners um is probably the best way to launch this. And if we were working with any net new airlines out the ones that we're set to launch with this year, that's the number one question we asked. How is your hosted page managed? Who's the partners? And then we'll build relationships with all those partners to make sure that that process can be taken care of in the background and they just need to simply validate a business case.

SPEAKER_00 24:01

Yeah, I think everyone's always got more ideas than their capacity to execute, so the prioritization is key.

SPEAKER_01 24:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:08

From my perspective, implementing split payments though does seem like a no-brainer from the airline, you generate more revenue, and there's added value for the customer, so it's it's win-win. Where do you see the friction for airlines in terms of adoption? Why aren't all airlines already uh offering split payments?

SPEAKER_01 24:27

I think we've covered it. It's new, right? It's niche, and airlines are always typically hesitant to be the first movers. Air Europa has been fantastic for us in doing that. We're set to launch, I would probably say around five through one partner this year. We mentioned a Tier 1 airline in the Middle East that will reveal the name shortly that I'm very, very excited about. And we're launching another partner where we should be launching their neighbor uh fairly soon as well. So I think um the scarcity in adoption has come from um it being niche, and then also it's taken some time for our solutions and split payments to be in the conversation, but then not only in the conversation, but available on some of these platforms to where it's just a simple, you know, Garf when you were at Flair, I call you and say, right, it's enabled on your payment provider, you can deploy it to the hosted page in 20 days. I'm pretty sure if I said that and you knew all the benefits, you'd say, well, okay, we can do this alongside everything else. So because of the the limited IT resources within an airline and the endless list of things to do, like any travel tech business, that's the classic chicken and egg that's holding any net new solution back. But as you get further adoption through solving some of those pain points, it starts to work in your favor in terms of the hockey stick where you might start off here and come wet right back up. And that's what we're now seeing happen with us this year.

SPEAKER_00 25:52

If we think more broadly, where else do you see potential for innovation within the fintech space as it relates to airlines?

SPEAKER_01 25:59

I think payment orchestration, uh obviously fintech's very broad, right? I6 specifically within PayTech, but I think payment orchestration is really good for airlines. Um, a lot of airlines like to do it themselves. Um, but in terms of working with other providers where you can have your hosted page managed and then connect all of the APMs and uh also adopt a multi-acquire strategy, which I think is obviously very important given the risk involved, is um really what we see from a paytech perspective at the forefront of um the travel payment conversation. But now we've got agentic and agentic commerce, and um, whether it be the UCP RAW with OpenAI or AP2 with Google, what are airlines going to do about that? Um I think that is sort of the next big bridge to tackle. And I'm very excited to kind of see over the next, I'll probably say 12 to 24 months that that that folds out from a fintech pay tech perspective because there's a lot of um unanswered questions when it comes to that and who will be the leaders in that. Do payment orchestration firms get involved in that and do they stand the chance? Or is it gonna be a larger provider that's part of the protocols and the partnerships that's already been built? These are some questions that I'm sure the airline payment teams are have at the fingertips and they're asking their providers around what's being done. But I definitely think that's gonna be a huge meteor that will come into the airline payments conversation very soon, that we're all gonna have to act very fast, not only just in airlines, but obviously in the online travel agency market as well.

SPEAKER_00 27:33

And so we we've touched already, obviously, on uh BNPL. I believe you are developing your own instalment payment uh product. How do you see hands-in's solution uh standing out in what is a somewhat crowded marketplace with, as we've mentioned, Clona, Afterpay, etc.? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:52

So we're actually developing what's called layaway. It's not BMPL where the BMPL provider is providing credit to the traveller, and then it's a basically a relationship between the traveller and the BMPL to receive the money back. Layaway is slightly different where you, as a provider, set up a relationship between the airline and the passenger, to where the passenger is paying a deposit for a high intent booking and then paying the rest off X days or months before the departure date. So it's a slightly different model, but the way to kind of summarize it is it's not lending, it's instalments without credit. A good analogy or example would be what you see with package holiday bookings, where you pay a deposit, you pay X amount up until the date of the departure, and if you don't pay the amount, you simply don't go. And for the airlines, it can be a win-win because if the traveller doesn't pay, they can just simply resell the seat at a higher price. There are a lot of complexities around like the ticket issuance uh with that product, which we're working with partners to um understand and reconciliation, all those things. But my vision of this product and how it sits with our business is that we can be the go-to player of when an airline wants to enable anything split payments, installments, BMPL, multicard, multiple methods, and group with one API integration, integrated with your existing PSP stack with some of the partners that we've mentioned. So that's where I think our business is heading, and we're well on our way to doing that. Um, but the instalment solution is sort of just finishing the narrative and the story for us eventually.

SPEAKER_00 29:36

Looking more broadly, you've also started to implement with some non-airline partners, for example, um sports events 365. Is that a direction you're planning to continue heading in in parallel to the airline business? Correct.

SPEAKER_01 29:50

So ticketing is um a great use case similar to airlines because everything typically has to be paid up front. Um for us, hotels can be a great use case, but everyone knows you can do things like pay at the property, which cancels out the narrative of group splitting because you can just do it at the card terminal, and then this issue of insufficient funds as well. So the markets where things have to be paid up front online at the checkout, and there's a chance that it could fail, and it's high ATV, that's where we sit. Now, obviously, as I probably word that, travel is the first thing that kind of speaks to mind, right? So that's why we're playing in that and airlines because of the way that they're set up, seems to be the most predominant for us. We should hopefully by the end of this year, our goal is to have around eight to ten on our books, whether they will be live will be a different question, but that's the goal. Kill one market and move over to the next. I mentioned that we are launching our first enterprise travel agency, which is the largest travel agency in Australia. Um so we're very excited about that. You mentioned ticketing, and we want to then, how I'm seeing it, use these different horses in the race to do what we've done with Air Europa in the uh airline industry and say, hey, like we're working with this OTA because some of the other OTAs adopt our services and our solution. And maybe we expand what split payments, as I mentioned to you, like evolve what it could mean for each industry and sector as we learn more with these case studies. Do the same in ticketing. Uh, we have actually launched a retailer uh in Australia as well called Budgie Smugglers. Now, this is mainly for our group product, but this is uh people probably can imagine what that is, but it's groups of people wanting to split the cost of their budgies that they're buying. It's a huge business over there, um, and it's really interesting. But I also think luxury retail could be a great use case for the multi-card uh multi-method product because um I see here in the UK Selfridges, as an example, has BMPLs, but the limit is only 4,000. Um, so if you want to buy, you know, go crazy on Selfridges online, you might have a hard time in doing that. Um, you could buy potentially, you know, online at different uh retail sites like Watchfinder Watches and split that across two cards. I think furnishing could be a great use case. We're also talking at the minute with um a large acquirer PSP where they've got use cases in the education sector of students wanting to pay high tuition fees and they do it on a pay-by-link with card, but they see bounce back rates on insufficient funds. So there's lots of different areas with which our solution can play into. But my advisory team and investors are saying, Sam, crawl, walk, run. So we're starting off in the travel industry and specifically airlines. I think we'll kill that market, we'll move on to the travel agency industry and ticketing because they're quite adjacent sectors, and then start to explore these like possibility sectors like the ones I just mentioned in a bit more depth next year.

SPEAKER_00 32:57

Makes sense. So to finish up, if you had to narrow it down, what's one thing that you wish airlines knew about split payments and hands in?

SPEAKER_01 33:05

How much money you can recover. Um, with the Tier 1 airline in the Middle East, they were losing a multi-nine-figure sum. Even if we don't hit our 20% number, like what we did with Air European, we recover 10% of that, and we gave all that business back to you, and we only charge on the incremental dollars that we generate, it's an easy business case. And if it can be enabled through your partner to where your dev IT resources are uh not too strained, again, I'm sure Garth, uh, if back in your position at Flair, you probably would have hopefully said yes to this. At the same time of recovering millions in transactions for airlines, we're also adding net new with the group product. And you know, if like we see Air Europa, they say, well, we want to compete with Iberia, well, now they've got a great product to advertise to groups when they're competing with Seats with Iberia. Could we have the same between Ryanair and EasyJet in the UK or American and Southwest, right? So it's not only just recovering millions in transactions, it's also adding net new sales. And airlines, I think, over time will know more about this. And Airlines has always been an industry that's slow to adopt, but I wish they could see and knew what we knew now so they could adopt it quicker and not lose out on this. Because once this starts to become a bit like what we've seen with BMPL in the retail sector, where it's not a new product that can generate all these new sales, it's just a mainstream adoption. You know, there'll be a point of diminishing returns for those airlines that maybe post the first 2030 adopt this solution. So definitely the time is now, um, and we're setting the plans in the roadmap uh to ensure that those that do adopt will do well.

SPEAKER_00 34:52

For anyone who's listening and feeling inspired, uh, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?

SPEAKER_01 34:57

Samuel at handsin.com or on my LinkedIn.

SPEAKER_00 35:01

Perfect. Okay, well, thanks Sam for joining us. I think this was super insightful. I hope we'll see more airlines adopting hands in and the split payments concept. And uh yeah, thank you for your time. Thank you.