Apple Pay Will Become a Standard Option for Travel Brands
Skift Take
It's no longer enough for a travel brand to have an app and hope that convenience alone will lead to a booking. By not needing to input a credit card number to make a transaction, the freedom to make that last-minute booking just got expanded.
When Apple announced several months ago that Apple Pay would soon expedite how consumers made payments online and in stores, travel brands from ride-sharing companies to booking sites began integrating the near field communications technology.
With its roll out of Apple Pay last week, Priceline.com didn't become the first booking site to integrate Apple Pay into a mobile app as HotelTonight did so in October. Priceline is certainly the biggest booking site to integrate the technology, though, and its marriage with Apple Pay signals a new era of on-the-go bookings leading to an even faster checkout process.
“Sixty-five percent of our customers are booking less than 24 hours in advance," said John Caine, Priceline.com's chief product officer. "They're likely already in the city where they’re staying. One of the biggest hurdles is figu
