Nok Air Fast Expanding Payment Channels

[george]

Nok Air fast expanding payment channels

BANGKOK: -- Nok Air has joined with five strategic partners to lay the fundamentals for expanded payment channels before the carrier adds new aircraft and opens new routes next year. CEO Patee Sarasin said Nok Air would offer a fully integrated payment system for tickets with wide coverage through ATMs, mobile phones and the Internet.

The company has earlier worked with Siam Commercial Bank (SCB) and Krung Thai Bank (KTB), which have about 10 million cardholders each. Now it has Bangkok Bank with 25 million cardholders as a new partner.

Besides ATMs, payments for Nok Air tickets can be made at outlets of Counter Service Co, while Advance M Pay Co will offer payments via WAP-enabled mobile phones, which total about 2.5 million.

Mr Patee said booking via the Nok Air web site and payment through credit cards accounted for 40% of total transactions at the moment. The carrier serves around 100,000 passengers per month.

He said that next year the company planned to add four more aircraft and open new domestic and international routes, especially to destinations in the region, with about three-hour flights.

``We will add many routes in the future therefore we need to increase our payment gateway to avoid bottlenecks in the reservation and payment system,'' he said.

Sehapan Chumsai, executive vice-president for marketing, said the addition of BBL was expected to increase the share of ticket payments made through means other than credit cards to 70%.

He said Nok Air, which began offering low-priced flights on July 23, 2004, was now making an operating profit and anticipated breaking even next year.

The airline expects to carry 1.8 million passengers this year and has a load factor of 78-80% on each flight.

The company is also considering increasing its fuel surcharge of at 200 baht for domestic flights.

--Bangkok Post 2005-09-27