Global payments backed by regional expertise
Helping Spain’s leading airline stay ahead in a post-pandemic world
Iberia is part of IAG group, and the leading airline that flies between Europe and Latin America. Like many airlines they faced enormous disruptions during the pandemic, but Iberia used the global slowdown as a chance to prepare for the future. Together, we put in place an effective, efficient payment risk strategy ready for the changes accelerated by the pandemic.
The challenge: keeping sales secure and seamless in a new normal
With a fleet of 87 aircraft, Iberia flies to almost 140 destinations and transports almost 30 million passengers per year. The pandemic had the potential to create challenges for Iberia, and one of these was the stress it placed on payments.
Airlines were under pressure to secure every sale they could whilst ensuring the most seamless experience possible for every customer. They were simultaneously dealing with emerging risk trends from new and trending payment methods, new gift card functionalities, and changes in consumer behavior.
They had to provide flexible ancillaries to cope with COVID uncertainty, and unusual activity, like last-minute one-way flight reservations, was no longer a marker of potential risk.
In this tough environment, Iberia had to manage sales, payment risks, and the payment experience while adjusting to the deeper changes in consumer behavior brought on by the pandemic. By quickly adapting to new payment trends (such as vouchers, wallets, and P2P payments), all of them more digital than ever, Iberia was ideally placed to adapt and optimize security controls—fast.
What we did: AI and human intelligence in harmony
Iberia has partnered with Cybersource for more than 10 years and made improvements to their payment risk management strategy over that time. When the pandemic hit, Iberia saw an opportunity to continue this improvement—and make the changes needed to be ready for the post-pandemic new normal.
Harnessing the power of AI with Decision Manager
Cybersource’s flagship fraud solution Decision Manager sits at the heart of Iberia’s payment risk management. With its machine learning capability, Decision Manager gains insights from more than 141 billion global transactions1 annually, helping Iberia review cases faster and make more accurate decisions.
During the pandemic, Iberia also harnessed Decision Manager’s Identity Behavior Analysis. This function uses cross-merchant data from the Visa network to recognize genuine repeat customers and, crucially, to identify legitimate new customers that had no previous history with Iberia.
The result? Minimized false positives during security checks and a great payment experience for Iberia’s customers.
Combining AI with human insight
The strongest solutions use AI and humans in tandem, and this is what Iberia has implemented. With the actionable insights provided by Decision Manager, Iberia’s team is free to focus on the critical analysis that leads to improved rules and acceptance rates.
For example, the team now uses Decision Manager’s Replay function—the first ever real-time ‘what if’ rules analysis tool. This enables them to test potential new rules offline using existing data before activating them in their live environment, ultimately helping them adapt quickly to new customer behavior, trends, or needs.
To support our clients, we ally their business insight with our payment expertise. With that in mind, we had a dedicated Cybersource Risk Consultant join Iberia’s team. Fluent in Spanish and highly experienced, they helped Iberia analyze Decision Manager data and optimize rules and also trained Iberia’s in-house team.
Multiple payment methods, one solution
All Iberia’s accepted payment methods across all channels, from payment cards to digital wallets to gift cards, are now fed into Decision Manager, which means more end-to-end protection. And since Decision Manager can consolidate transactions across payment methods and channels, Iberia’s team is empowered with deeper insights, helping deliver stronger protection and higher acceptance rates.
Impactful results for Iberia
+20% conversion2
More genuine customers enjoying a seamless experience at checkout means higher sales conversion. In fact, Iberia saw a 20% increase in conversion at the point of payment.
-80% reject rate2
Between 2019 and 2022, Iberia saw an 80% reduction in its reject rate without experiencing an increase in chargebacks.
-60% review rate2
By automating and optimizing the review process—and empowering their team with insights—Iberia saw a 60% decrease in its review rate. In short, fewer genuine payments were being lost to reviews, delays, and rejections.
Confidence to focus on direct sales
With a secure and seamless payment experience at checkout, Iberia has the confidence to drive customers to their own channels for more direct sales—and therefore build even closer relationships with them.
1 VisaNet transaction volume based on 2022 fiscal year. Domestically routed transactions may not hit VisaNet.
2 Results based on transaction analysis by Iberia, March 2023.
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