Challenge

With more than 60 years of experience, Intelsat is a global satellite services provider operating one the world’s largest integrated space and terrestrial networks. Today, Intelsat provides in-flight internet connectivity across more than 25 airlines and strives to make it easy for passengers to connect to Wi-Fi and carry on with their online activities. And making the payment process for those passengers as simple and effortless as possible is a key part of Intelsat’s mission.

“When you’re sitting in an airplane seat, you don’t want to reach down into your bag to get your credit card or go into the overhead bin to get your payment information,” said Nick Hauan, senior manager of product at Intelsat. “We want to bring an experience from a best-in-class ecommerce enterprise provider who knows how to help people get through a purchase path easily.”

In 2022, Intelsat leaders began seeking a new payment provider for its in-flight Wi-Fi service. The company had an aging, fragmented payment stack that included multiple payment processors. Looking forward, Intelsat envisioned a simpler, streamlined tech stack. The company wanted to replace its legacy system with a single, unified payment solution that was capable of not only processing global payments across all airlines, but also supporting recurring payments and managing taxes across regions.

With a new payment system, Intelsat also wanted to optimize authorization rates and offer a more reliable, better payment experience for in-flight guests. With its legacy system, Intelsat was missing out on important features designed to improve authorization, and it needed a provider that could deliver these and help the company make the best use of them.

Solution

Intelsat chose to replace its fragmented legacy payment system with Stripe, which would enable the company to unify and streamline its global payment infrastructure. “We chose Stripe because we saw it as a platform for growth,” said Hauan. “Stripe has a ton of tools and services outside of just payment processing.”

Intelsat opted to replace its disparate payment stack and process all of its in-flight Wi-Fi payment volume with Stripe Payments. For streamlined financial operations and improved oversight, the company used Stripe Organizations, which provides a centralized way to manage multiple Stripe accounts in one place. By consolidating payments onto Stripe and using Organizations to manage payments across all airline partners, Intelsat can simplify tracking revenue, overseeing operations, managing user access, and coordinating payment flows—all from a single dashboard. This integration will reduce the company’s reconciliation files from five different providers to one—enabling easier reconciliation and reporting.

“The beauty of Stripe is it’s one file,” said Hauan. “We’re going to get a single file at the end of the month that we can pull from to look at all airline partners across the globe, all transacting in different currencies and using different payment types.”

Rather than maintaining separate integrations with each airline, Intelsat consolidated into one unified payment integration using Organizations, which enabled the company to share customer and payment methods across their accounts. With this capability, passengers can purchase Wi-Fi quickly and easily across Intelsat’s airline partners. And if a passenger purchases Wi-Fi on one airline, they can log in to their Wi-Fi Onboard account to seamlessly purchase Wi-Fi on another airline using their saved payment method—without re-entering their payment information.

Intelsat will use Stripe Checkout, a prebuilt payment form, to create a seamless checkout process that can be customized for each airline’s brand and offers support for more than 40 payment methods. By using Stripe’s embedded Checkout integration, airlines can embed the checkout directly into their own website and keep passengers on the same site throughout the checkout flow.

Intelsat also plans to replace its outdated, homegrown billing solution with Stripe Billing, which will enable airlines to offer subscriptions for passengers who fly frequently with a specific airline and want to set up a recurring payment for ongoing connectivity. With Billing, airlines can set up a variety of subscription offerings, including tiered pricing, promotions and discounts, and usage-based billing.

For a tax management solution that works easily with Checkout and Billing, Intelsat plans to integrate Stripe Tax, which will help the company handle complex billing requirements across different airlines and jurisdictions.

Intelsat partnered with Stripe professional services to implement Stripe and bring its vision of a unified global payments solution to life. The team helped Intelsat break down its requirements, navigate key product decisions, and solve edge cases for low-connectivity environments, translating its requirements into the ideal architecture and Stripe solutions to achieve the company’s goal of a seamless payment solution. The relationship enabled Stripe professional services to help Intelsat access the latest product features to get the most out of Stripe. The teams also collaborated to optimize Intelsat’s use of Payments features to improve authorization rates and, in turn, build a better payment experience.

Results

Sharing customers and payment methods across accounts leads to a 45% increase in checkout rate with saved cards

By consolidating its legacy payment system and moving to a unified global solution with Stripe, Intelsat can now ensure a consistent, reliable customer experience across airlines. With its new unified payment solution, Intelsat can offer the latest payment optimizations and features to all of its airline partners, and airlines are able to enhance the passenger experience with an easy purchasing process for in-flight Wi-Fi. After sharing customers and payment methods across accounts, Intelsat has seen a 45% increase in the checkout rate for customers who see a saved card compared to those who don’t.

Stripe Billing provides new features and flexibility for airlines’ subscription offerings

For Intelsat’s airline partners that offer subscription plans for in-flight Wi-Fi, Billing provides the flexibility they need to build recurring payment offerings tailored to their passengers’ needs. And for the airlines that previously lacked support for subscriptions, they can now easily test new pricing plans and quickly launch recurring payments.

Payment optimizations contribute to 10% lift in authorization rates

In moving to Stripe, Intelsat gained the latest payment optimizations, which are continually updated to keep pace with the evolving payments landscape. These optimizations, such as network tokens and Stripe’s card account updater, have led to a 10% uplift in authorization rates. Partnering with Stripe has enabled Intelsat to focus on core competencies while delivering the modern payment experience that airlines and their passengers expect. “We are experts on creating the best in-flight connectivity and entertainment experience. We want to remove ourselves from having to be experts on payments—with Stripe, we can do that,” said Hauan.