Flight booking checkouts overwhelmingly assume a credit card as the default payment method — a reasonable assumption for airlines' primary Western markets, and a real access barrier in markets where card penetration is lower than mobile money penetration by a wide margin.
Zuma Air Tickets accepts payment directly from the traveller's Zuma Wallet balance — funded through whichever local rail they normally use — alongside card payment for travellers who prefer it, connecting to GDS/airline booking systems on the back end regardless of which payment method the traveller chose on the front end.
The lesson here isn't really about flights specifically — it's that "add mobile money as a payment option" is too narrow a framing for platforms serious about African markets. The wallet-first framing, where mobile money funds a wallet that then pays for anything on the platform including high-ticket items like flights, removes friction more effectively than treating mobile money as a bolt-on option alongside a card-first checkout.
