Industry onlookers are always anxious to remind us of how many products and processes that we now take for granted in corporate travel actually had their origins in the upstart low-cost consumer sector aimed at the budget-conscious.
And a small news story this week is tipping another low-cost initiative that we shouldn't at all be surprised to see become part of ordinary consumer behaviour.
Level, IAG's new long-haul, low-cost carrier is introducing mobile pay on its flights. The technology, which will be called Pair and Pay, means that passengers can connect their devices with their seatback screen in order to purchase any in-flight ancillaries from food and drink through to WiFi and, in future, in-flight entertainment. Norwegian Air, which has seen rapid growth of its long-haul, low—cost network, already operates a similar on-demand system for ancillaries.
Level, which is initially flying from Barcelona to Los Angeles, Oakland, Buenos Aires and Punta Cana in the Dominican Republican, is targeting the leisure market but as the founders of easyJet and Ryanair can testify, innovative products designed with the backpacker in mind have a way of entering the business travel mainstream.
And this is likely to be no different. First of all, IAG is already openly saying that it is looking at extending Pair and Pay to the other carriers in its organisation. Secondly like so much in the mobile portfolio, the first customers may always be tech-y millennials but the business community follows very shortly thereafter.
Mobile payments may look as if they're for the young — just watch how many under-25s aim their phone at the payment pad when entering the London tube or a bus — and merely an easier way to pay than trying to retrieve a card to flash for the purpose.
In theory the corporate manager could benefit enormously.
Like their corporate card antecedents mobile payments are much more than a means of payment. Each individual device will be linked with a traveller so that any expenditure can be linked to an individual, a department, a project and a specific trip. Controls can be put in place as to what is (say in-flight WiFi) and what is not (perhaps access to adult films?) an allowable business expense for that individual.
Yet the challenge is getting access to that data. Level's transactions are controlled through the airline's own Levelair app. This new consumer-focused payment technology may force its way into consideration by corporates but they will have to negotiate with the airlines to get at all that data.