Southwest Airlines integrates Apple Pay for tickets, meals and more

Southwest Airlines this week integrated Apple Pay transaction support in its mobile app, allowing customers to purchase tickets, in-flight meals, baggage options and more with Apple's payment service.

As of Wednesday, Apple Pay now shows up in the Southwest Airlines app, offering users an alternative to traditional credit and debit card payments, and existing support for PayPal. The airline announced the new customer service offering in a press release.

"Providing modern digital payment solutions to our Customers is critical," said Christopher Priebe, Director, Treasury, Payments and Risk at Southwest Airlines. "The launch of Apple Pay enhances our ability to sell flights, as well as ancillary products using one of the most widely-used digital wallets in North America."

The latest Apple Pay integration is made possible through a multi-year partnership between Southwest and digital payments firm CellPoint Digital, along with the assistance of airline-owned payment network UATP. A deal inked in June 2018 integrated CellPoint's alternative payments hub with UATP's Ceptor payment platform.

With CellPoint, airlines have access to payments systems run by 350 partners, including digital wallet solutions Apple Pay, Visa Checkout, WeChat Pay, Alipay and Google Pay.

Like other major airlines, Southwest integrates a number of mobile technologies, like Wallet, in its iOS app. With the new Apple Pay functionality, users can purchase tickets from the carrier's app — with Apple Card if they so choose — and store it in Wallet for redemption at the gate.

Southwest has partnered with Apple in the past, offering travelers iPads as a form of in-flight entertainment and, more recently, providing free streaming access to Apple Music predecessor Beats Music in 2014.

18 Comments

macgui 2456 comments · 17 Years

About 5 years ago

I don't fly much but this is what I like to see– more merchants using Apple Pay. It's fine that Apple is continually adding banks to the Apple Pay fold, but it doesn't do much good if merchants don't follow through.

BBirdy 3 comments · 6 Years

I’ve spent the summer in a small town in British Columbia, Canada. I was shocked how many businesses, large and small, and customers use phone tap payments. Restaurants bring a phone tap device to your table that even does tip calculations. And when I use my IPhone/Apple Watch pay, no signing bills. You can even tap your IPhone at gas pumps. I reside in Houston, Texas—4th largest city in the USA—and do NOT have that almost total access to IPhone payment options, especially the gas station, restaurants, take-out. Even big department stores don’t do any phone pay in Houston. Canada is very tech savvy, much more than most places in the USA from what I’ve seen. I love it!

Soli 9981 comments · 9 Years

BBirdy said:

I’ve spent the summer in a small town in British Columbia, Canada. I was shocked how many businesses, large and small, and customers use phone tap payments. Restaurants bring a phone tap device to your table that even does tip calculations. And when I use my IPhone/Apple Watch pay, no signing bills. You can even tap your IPhone at gas pumps. I reside in Houston, Texas—4th largest city in the USA—and do NOT have that almost total access to IPhone payment options, especially the gas station, restaurants, take-out. Even big department stores don’t do any phone pay in Houston. Canada is very tech savvy, much more than most places in the USA from what I’ve seen. I love it!

What department stores are you referring?