Southwest Airlines Introduces New Inflight Retail System for Passengers

US-based Southwest Airlines, the world’s largest low-cost carrier, has appointed Most to provide its inflight retail and payment systems. The systems will bring together onboard product management, bespoke payment hardware, and payment processing, all customised for the airline.

The Most system has a modular application architecture, which enables clients such as Southwest to alter parts of their retail experiences via the software ecosystem.

“As we reimagine our inflight retail process, we needed a solution that eased workloads and improved our data collection, while reducing the time to handle each passenger transaction,” said Ron Freer, senior manager of inflight mobility at Southwest Airlines, of the selection. “Most’s agile development process and rapid iterations allowed us to continuously revise the application, ensuring a successful deployment on a very aggressive timeline.”

On the hardware front, the system includes the most.Onthego solution, which combines an iPad Mini 6 with a dedicated payment device, all with a single point of charge. Credit or debit card payments can be processed via NFC/contactless tap (including Apple and Google Pay), Smart Chip, or swipe. The most.Pay payment gateway handles retail transactions during flight and enables frequent transmission of offline payments for processing. Data analytics, including product management, can also be relayed in near real-time to back-office systems, through the most.Retail connected management architecture.

“Deploying a solution at the scale of Southwest Airlines and at a rapid pace was a huge accomplishment for our team,” said Jan Blanchard, CEO of Most. “Adopting the Most solution makes for smoother exchanges between the airline’s flight attendants and customers.”