Discover top fintech news and events!
Subscribe to FinTech Weekly's newsletter
Read by executives at JP Morgan, Coinbase, Blackrock, Klarna and more
Data Infrastructure Supports Airline-Facing Growth
Kani Payments, a UK-based fintech specialising in reporting, reconciliation, and compliance solutions, has announced a strategic partnership with travel payments company Swiipr. The move signals Kani’s entry into the airline compensation space, an area long affected by fragmented systems and slow processing.
The partnership will support Swiipr’s growing operational needs as it expands its real-time digital compensation platform for airlines. As the aviation industry continues to digitise passenger services, this collaboration aims to standardise back-office data processes that have remained inefficient despite broader digital advancements.
Swiipr Responds to Growing Platform Demands
Swiipr provides payment solutions for airlines and ground handlers, enabling real-time compensation and operational payments directly to passengers and airline staff through mobile wallets. The platform has already been adopted by over 137 airlines across 76 countries and operates at more than 200 airports globally.
Increased demand for Swiipr’s services has raised the need for scalable data handling. To support this, the company will use Kani’s technology to automate reporting and reconciliation across its various data sources. This includes consolidating multi-source payment data into a single view and generating custom reports tailored to airline-specific requirements.
By automating these critical backend functions, Swiipr is looking to improve internal reporting, enhance customer-facing insights, and maintain consistent compliance standards across regions. The company’s leadership has pointed to data integration as a necessary foundation for expanding its offering to new airline partners and geographies.
A New Sector for Kani
For Kani Payments, this marks its first formal partnership in the airline sector. The company has built its platform to meet the needs of payment service providers and fintech businesses across multiple industries. Its move into airline compensation follows a multi-million-pound Series A funding round led by Maven Capital Partners, aimed at accelerating growth and sector diversification.
With the airline industry still reliant on legacy systems for many of its financial operations, this partnership allows Kani to extend its technology into a niche with clear inefficiencies and growing digital demand. Airline disruption compensation, in particular, remains a high-friction area for both providers and passengers.
Kani’s platform offers automation capabilities that reduce manual intervention, improve data reliability, and generate timely compliance-ready reports — features that directly address pain points in the airline compensation process.
Strategic Fit Signals Broader Expansion
The collaboration aligns with both companies’ 2025 growth strategies. For Swiipr, streamlined data processes mean faster expansion and more reliable service delivery to airline partners. For Kani, the partnership opens a new vertical where its software can be applied to resolve industry-specific challenges.
The airline compensation space, while specialised, involves high payment volumes, varied regulatory requirements, and complex reconciliation processes — a combination that mirrors broader challenges found across fintech ecosystems. Kani’s ability to deliver value in such a complex environment reinforces its positioning as a data-focused fintech with sector-agnostic applications.
Addressing Operational Complexity in Travel Paytech
Airline payment infrastructure has often lagged behind customer-facing technology. While mobile boarding passes and self-check-in kiosks have become widespread, compensation and disruption payments are still handled through outdated systems, vouchers, or manual interventions. This creates bottlenecks during high-stress travel events and contributes to operational inefficiencies.
Swiipr’s digital platform aims to reduce those delays and improve the passenger experience. With Kani’s technology now supporting the backend, the combined offering becomes more scalable, potentially allowing airlines to standardise how they issue compensation regardless of region or disruption type.
As compensation regulations tighten across jurisdictions and customer expectations rise, digitisation is no longer optional for airline operators. By focusing on the often-overlooked data layer, the Swiipr–Kani partnership addresses a core barrier to consistent, scalable service delivery.
Closing the Gaps in Airline Compensation
While the partnership is still in its early stages, the strategic alignment between Swiipr’s operational role and Kani’s data expertise positions both companies to benefit from the increasing digitalisation of airline services. With data volumes growing and margin pressures intensifying in the travel sector, the ability to reconcile payments quickly and accurately is becoming a key differentiator.
This development also reflects a broader trend in fintech: the move from consumer-facing novelty to infrastructure-level reliability. As platforms scale, their ability to manage data across partners, regions, and systems becomes central to long-term success.
Kani’s entry into this sector comes at a time when travel paytech is looking beyond user interface innovation and addressing deeper operational problems. If the technology delivers as intended, it may also open further opportunities for Kani across logistics, insurance, and other verticals with similar data and compliance demands.
