S7 Airlines Experiences Boost In Sales Through Blockchain Payment Platform

Russia’s second-largest airline, S7 Airlines,reached over $1 million dollars in a month on a ticketing platform it developed, with the help of blockchain technology.

As per the announcement made by S7 Airlines on Wednesday, the positive figure gained in July is proof that the technology can help boost the sales for businesses.

Ekaterina Dmitruk, S7 Group’s sales director, said:

“Thanks to this new technology, now it’s easier for our agents to work directly with the airline, which allowed us to expand our own S7 Airlines sales network. Within this year, we are planning to deploy first online agents, whose work would comply with the NDC standard, on the platform.”

The first air ticket sold by S7 Airlines was over an Ethereum-based private blockchain platform, innovated in partnership with the Russian commercial Alfa-Bank, in July 2018.

Using the blockchain technology allowed for the airline to connect its ticket booking system to the banking system securely, increasing the payment processing speed and decreasing the big amount of manual paperwork required by traditional methods.

The project reports that blockchain “creates value and is largely decisive for the B2B market,” as commented by the director of transaction business at Alfa-Bank, Pavel Ryazanov.

According to the reports, payments made since January over the blockchain platform have “increased tenfold”. It is also transforming to the automation of other processes using the Hyperledger Fabric platform, said Nikolai Mukhanov, the executive director of S7 Techlab.The enterprise had experimented with blockchain projects before. Last year, in integration with Gazpromneft-Aero and Alfa-Bank, S7 Airlines became the “first airline in Russia to refuel an aircraft using smart contracts based on the blockchain technology.”