IATA: Airlines’ payment costs rise to US$24.5B in 2025

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IATA data shows that airlines’ payment costs rose to US$24.5B in 2025, up 10.4% from 2023, while travel sales grew 7.7% over the same period to US$1.05T. Payment processing fees accounted for US$20.7B of total costs, with the average fee rate for card transactions at 2.53%, above the overall average of 1.97%. IATA is exploring ways to reduce costs through services such as IATA Pay, which supports local real-time payment solutions in 34 countries; its survey found that 29% of passengers prefer digital wallets and 8% prefer local real-time payment solutions.