We’re really happy with what we’ve achieved so far with Payment Highway and are looking forward to building new services with them in the future.Carita Närvänen, Finavia
When Finavia first launched the Helsinki Airport app, its main purpose was to help passengers and other airport visitors find the flight information and services they were looking for.
However, since parking was identified as a key service at the airport, Development Manager Carita Närvänen and her team started looking for a way to bring pre-booking and payments into the app.
Setting goals for the updated Helsinki Airport app
Originally pre-booking and paying for parking was only available through the Finavia web app. However, the experience wasn’t the smoothest for frequent travelers, since they couldn’t save their card details in the app. Instead, every time they wanted to pre-book a parking spot, they’d have to fill in the same information.In addition to parking services, the Finavia team wanted to allow customers to pre-pay for their retail purchases, pay for food and beverages at the airport, and buy lounge passes with the app. Thus, the old Helsinki Airport app was in for a complete overhaul.
With the help of Finavia’s design and development partner Futurice, Carita and her team set the following requirements for the updated app:
- ease of use for the customer
- support for one-click payments and saving payment card information
- simple merchant interface
- payment security
Together, the team also set key business objective for the new app: ramping up the share of pre-paid parking spots to 20%.
Building payments into the app
The next step was to select a payments partner that would support Carita and her team reach the newly set goals. To find the right fit in terms of user experience, price, and security, Futurice performed extensive research and comparison of several payment alternatives. As a result, Payment Highway came out as the winner.
With the development work well underway, the Futurice team began to integrate Payment Highway into the app.
“Futurice built Payment Highway into the app and it went very smoothly. Overall it was very easy to do business with the Payment Highway team; they were very proactive and answered very fast. We were happy to work with them.” Carita says.
Growing the share of pre-booked parking and developing the app further
When the first version of the new Helsinki Airport app was launched, Carita and her team were happy to see that the percentage of pre-booked parking spots started growing steadily.
“The new app helped us reach the goal we had set for ourselves in the beginning of the project,” Carita says. “We didn’t really get any feedback from the users either, which was a good sign, since it means that the app was working exactly as they expected it to.”
Since then, the Helsinki Airport app has come a long way.
“After the first iteration was deemed a success, we added the ability to buy lounge access. The feature has been really popular and it has helped us spread the word that lounges aren’t just for people with a certain tier airline loyalty card but anyone can get access.” Terhi Aho, Finavia’s eCommerce Manager explains.
With the new features in place, Finavia has been able to increase the accuracy of financial forecasting and better manage the dynamic pricing of their parking garage and Premium Lane. In addition, the operational team can now plan cleaning and maintenance activities based on the data they get from the app.
And when it comes to the future, Carita and her team have big plans:
“We’re constantly developing the app and conducting surveys to understand how we can help make the passengers’ journey even smoother. We’re really happy with what we’ve achieved so far with Payment Highway and are looking forward to continue building new services with them.”
