Challenge

Park.Aero was founded in 2016 as a joint venture between airports in Munich, Frankfurt, Hanover, Stuttgart and Vienna. The goal was to streamline the booking process for airport parking and maximise revenue by creating a digital platform that would allow passengers to reserve parking spaces on Park.Aero's website, or through distribution partners such as travel agencies, airlines and online travel sites.

To get its parking reservation system up and running as quickly as possible, Park.Aero built its platform through a series of integrations with payment processors the airports were already using. The multiple-payment-provider setup made it difficult to manage fund flows and created technical issues, such as payment provider downtimes, poor 3D Secure (3DS) integrations for cardholder verification and difficulty adding new payment methods like digital wallets.

Adding new airports and payment processors was necessary for growth but increased the complexity and risk of payment failures, inhibiting Park.Aero's ability to scale. So Park.Aero resolved to consolidate its payments operations onto a unified system.

Park.Aero wanted the new system to generate a higher payment success rate and greater revenue potential for its partners. To do that, the company sought to improve the checkout experience and support more payment methods. "In terms of user-friendliness, a comprehensive selection of payment methods is very important to us", said Ludwig Ascher, CEO of Park.Aero. "We also wanted to guarantee an intuitive checkout process and ensure stable integrations".

Solution

In 2019, one of Park.Aero's partners, a digital solutions subsidiary of the Lufthansa Group, requested that Park.Aero adopt Stripe Payments to improve the speed and ease of payment processing. Park.Aero appreciated Stripe's useful features, reliability and convenience. Following a closer evaluation of Stripe's full suite of products, Park.Aero decided to onboard all of its partner airports on Stripe to improve the parking reservations and payment flow for Lufthansa.

Over the years, Park.Aero gradually migrated other payment processes and partners to Stripe. For example, Stripe Connect was implemented to handle Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA)-based collections from travel agencies, simplifying payouts and improving automation across the system. With Stripe, Park.Aero was able to streamline money movement between airport partners, travel agents and other third-party distributors – all in one place. Using the Stripe API, Park.Aero also established platform-to-platform integrations with popular travel marketplaces to capture reservations and payments made on those sites.

Park.Aero appreciated that Payments' 3DS integration authenticates customer payment details automatically if mandated by regulations such as Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) in Europe – it's simply added to the checkout flow, with no additional work required for Park.Aero.

To accommodate the payment preferences of travellers across its network, Park.Aero adopted Stripe's Optimised Checkout Suite in 2024. Using the prebuilt Stripe Checkout UI, Park.Aero enabled credit cards, digital wallets Apple Pay and Google Pay and PayPal for transactions made on the Park.Aero website. To better serve customers based in other European countries, Park.Aero added several local payment methods, including EPS (Austria), MobilePay (Nordic countries), iDEAL (the Netherlands), BLIK and Przelewy24 (Poland) and Bancontact (Belgium), as well as Klarna for buy now, pay later transactions.

Park.Aero also added Link, a wallet built by Stripe that saves and autofills customer payment details for a fast, easy checkout experience. In early 2025, Park.Aero migrated its remaining payment processing to Stripe, eliminating its previous multiple-provider payments setup.

Results

One hour to onboard a new airport

Using Stripe-hosted onboarding, it only takes about an hour to integrate new airports into the Stripe-powered payment platform. Park.Aero's network has expanded to include 14 airports, so this ease of onboarding has saved considerable time and resources. "Connecting new partners is done in a short time and with little effort", said Laurin Frenzel, head of IT. "Having Stripe as a centralised payment service provider for all airports has streamlined our internal processes".

7.3% improvement in successful payments on the Park.Aero website

After Park.Aero implemented Checkout, the share of successful payments for reservations made directly on its website increased by 7.3% immediately. "The integration of Stripe Checkout has enabled a broader range of available payment methods, contributing to a smoother and more flexible checkout process", said Ascher. The automatic integration of 3DS into payment flows has further supported payment success rates.

Travellers using Link on Park.Aero check out three times faster than non-Link users

By enabling one-click checkout for parking reservations with Link, Park.Aero delivered the fast and intuitive checkout process travellers were looking for. "We have noticed that Link has a very positive effect on the proportion of successful payment transactions", said Ascher. "Its share of transactions is larger than expected, and it's working really well".

Airports appreciate how Stripe has improved their parking reservation systems

For Park.Aero, positive feedback from airports has validated its partnership with Stripe. "Park.Aero offers airport customers a modern and convenient booking process", said Susanne Schlagenhaufen, chairwoman of the Shareholders' Assembly of Park.Aero. "The integration of Stripe for payment processing has further enhanced the user experience".

Airports also reported improved conversion rates and overall satisfaction, including Frankfurt's. "The integration of Stripe went extremely smoothly", said Gerald Krebs, senior vice president of parking and mobility at Fraport AG, the operator of Frankfurt Airport. "Our customers benefit from a wider range of payment options, which has a positive impact on conversion rates".

Stripe's stable of international payment methods drives expansion plans

With the Optimised Checkout Suite, Park.Aero will be able to add many more payment methods through its existing integration, further supporting its expansion plans. "In the upcoming years, we want to set up agreements with airports that are not German-speaking or part of the Eurozone, so local payment methods and multi-currency payments will be important factors", said Ascher. "To meet these challenges, we are planning further cooperation with Stripe".