Travel involves more than just going from one place to another. It's about embracing new cultures and ideas, interacting with different people, and delving into their history and customs. Ultimately, it's about experiences that broaden your understanding of life and enhance your worldview.
It’s those experiences that Pelago strives to deliver. The company is part of the Singapore Airlines Group and gives travellers a platform to book a range of travel activities, attraction tickets, and tours across 150+ countries.
As Pelago gains traction among global travelers, the company is starting to focus on its payments. By partnering with Primer, Pelago is reconfiguring its payment stack to enhance the customer experience with local payment methods, reduce processing costs through multiple processors, and improve operational efficiency and fraud prevention with third-party integrations.
We spoke with Altaf Dhamani, Pelago's Chief Product Officer, to discuss the significance of efficient payments in the travel industry, Pelago’s strategies to build on its recent success, and how Primer’s robust and versatile payments infrastructure will help Pelago use payments as a lever for growth.
Tell us about Pelago’s vision, mission, and growth in recent years.
Pelago is a travel experiences platform by Singapore Airlines. Our mission is to simplify travel by providing access to experiences that connect travelers to both global and local cultures, particularly in Singapore and other destinations served by Singapore Airlines. We offer over 200k products across 150+ countries—from attractions and tours to offbeat adventures.
Travelers can access a wide range of activities tailored to their interests through Pelago, backed by a best-price guarantee and the world-class customer service of Singapore Airlines. In addition, KrisFlyer members can redeem their miles to book experiences or earn additional miles for every booking made on Pelago. Our goal is to create memorable experiences for travelers and to increase engagement by allowing members to earn miles on activities, thus fostering loyalty.
For the past decade, you’ve been at the forefront of digitization in the travel industry. What role have payments played in its evolution?
Improvements in technology have been game-changers, giving entrepreneurs and established businesses the opportunity to innovate, take risks, and ultimately build the dynamic travel industry that exists today.
Payments have been a huge part of this story.
When I first encountered payment technology a decade ago while developing one of the first vacation rental marketplace for Asia, the experience was far from ideal. We used a local processor and a legacy global processor, both of which were built on archaic technology and had inadequate documentation. The integration process was a nightmare, and even after finishing it, we faced frequent payment failures without clear reasons.
The situation has vastly improved nowadays. Modern payment processors allow businesses to start accepting payments quickly and efficiently, often within a matter of days.
However, the global nature of the travel sector presents its own challenges. It's nearly impossible to operate optimally with just one payment processor. This is particularly true in Asia, where market fragmentation means no single processor can offer comprehensive coverage and performance.
That was our experience.
Using a single global payment processor worked well when focusing mainly on Singapore. However, as we expanded into other APAC markets, we encountered new requirements that our single processor couldn’t meet, such as supporting specific APMs.
The only solution was to use additional payment processors and increase the complexity of our payment stack. We didn’t want to do that. We have our core business to focus on.
So, we asked: How can we scale our payment stack without taking on all this additional complexity?
The answer was Primer. As an infrastructure layer, it solves our challenge by allowing us to use a variety of payment services without the painful process of directly integrating with them.
You’re ramping up on Primer presently with USD and EUR transactions. Why have you started there?
We've already enabled a new payment processor through Primer, which highlights how seamless the process is. Presently, we’re testing its performance with USD and EUR transactions, which is going well. We’re also in the process of switching on our existing PSP in Primer. Once that happens, we’ll process 100% of our volume across all currencies through Primer.
This is an exciting milestone for us, allowing us to leverage more of Primer’s functionalities. For instance, we'll be able to intelligently route payments to the best-performing PSP based on factors like currency and utilize advanced functionality like Fallbacks to recover failed payments.
Ultimately, one of the reasons we choose Primer is because its Workflows enable us to build as much sophistication as needed to meet our business goals with minimal effort—we’re just scratching the surface of what’s possible.
What are your thoughts on the checkout process now that you’re using Primer?
We care about the checkout conversion rate. At the moment, our approach is relatively static: we present the user with various payment options, and they can select which one they want.
However, the flexibility of Primer’s Universal Checkout changes those dynamics. It allows us to adopt a much smarter and more tailored approach to presenting these options to our customers. We’re now considering the customer's preferences based on where they’re from, the conversion rate of each payment method, and even the associated costs.
For example, in Singapore, PayNow is a more cost-effective option than credit cards. Using Primer, we can strategically position PayNow at the checkout to encourage its use among travelers, optimizing both conversion rates and cost efficiency.
Ultimately, Primer allows us to dynamically adapt our checkout process better to suit our customers’ preferences and our business strategy, leading to a more efficient payment experience.
Are you considering using some of the additional solutions Primer offers across the payment lifecycle?
Yes, we are. Given our limited resources, deploying tools that address our most significant business challenges is crucial. If there are tools available that can alleviate our pain points, we will utilize them. Tokenization is a prime example. We plan to use Primer for tokenization to avoid the complexities of handling it ourselves. The same applies to reconciliation. Our approach is to streamline any aspect of payments with a Primer solution whenever possible.
Partnering with Primer has been a strategic move for us. It enables us to scale our business efficiently and simplifies our journey, helping us focus on our core business while managing payments more effectively.
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