Singapore Airlines - Upgrading user experience through digital

“The partnership will provide great benefits to both our companies, given our shared aim to be a digital leader in our respective industries, with enhanced customer benefits through new flight booking, merchandising and reward programme ties.”

Mak Swee Wah, Executive Vice President, Commercial, Singapore Airlines

About Singapore Airlines

Founded in 1947, Singapore Airlines (SIA) is the flag carrier airline of Singapore. It has been ranked as the world's best airline by Skytrax four times (2015-2018) and topped Travel & Leisure's best airline rankings for more than 20 years. In the last financial year, the SIA Group, including subsidiaries Silkair and Scoot, carried more than 36 million passengers to 138 destinations.

Future-proofing The Business

In 2018, SIA embarked on a three-year transformation programme to be the world’s leading digital airline, with the aim of enhancing customers’ travel experiences and ensuring the company's long-term competitiveness in a changing operating environment. They have focused on revenue-generation initiatives and enhancements to operational efficiency, among other objectives.

Digital Booking and Payments Platform

SIA and DBS signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to enhance digital capabilities across various digital platforms to enable a seamless seamless flight booking and payment experience for passengers.

Improved user experiences introduced under the MOU include:

• flight booking and merchandising capabilities on DBS’ platforms,
• a DBS-SIA Rewards Programme on KrisPay,
• expanded payment options through PayNow, Singapore‘s instant payment system, using API technology.

The MOU aligns with SIA’s move to enhance digital capabilities company-wide, and DBS’ vision to make payments simple and hassle-free for customers through the deployment of integrated digital ecosystems.

The solution underpinning the expansion of payment options encompasses the following payment collection and refund capabilities:

1.  Real-time PayNow QR collection for online ticket sales
   • Integration of PayNow QR into SIA’s website for customers to scan and pay 
   • Collections credits swept daily as a consolidated entry into SIA’s bank account with DBS 
   • Inward Credit Notification (ICN) API to provide a real-time system update of ticket purchase information
   • Daily transaction reports sent to SIA via the Secure File Transfer Protocol connectivity
2.  Instant Refund API to streamline online ticket cancellation
   • Integration of Refund API into company’s website 
   • Real-time refunds in the event of a change in customer’s travel plans
   • Original transaction information stored for 12 months to support instant refunds
   • Daily transaction reports generated via Transaction Enquiry API
   • Convenient access to DBS MAX portal to view refund status, manage refunds and generate reports

World’s Leading Digital Airline

The DBS solution makes payments simple and hassle-free for SIA’s customers, and helps SIA to be operationally more efficient with digital collections and refunds, as a result of instant settlement for purchases and ease of account reconciliation.

And with increased adoption of digital payments by SIA customers (as opposed to credit/debit card payments), SIA also enjoys cost savings from the reduction in card-based payments and the associated merchant processing charges.