Press Release

Airlink launches gift voucher programme

Airlink, the independent Southern African airline, is offering customers the ability to purchase flexible gift vouchers redeemable against air tickets and a variety of services on the Airlink website.

The vouchers are perfect for personal and corporate gifts up to a maximum R25,000 value. They are valid for three years and can be used multiple times until the remaining value is completely used up. They are transferrable and can be redeemed against all Airlink fares and class of travel as well as ancillary services such as extra baggage allowances.

“Our market research has shown that the COVID-19 pandemic has radically altered people’s travel spending behaviour and that they demand and value flexibility more than anything else. Our new gift voucher offering is the latest of several innovative Airlink responses to meet our customers’ expectations,” said Airlink CEO and Managing Director, Rodger Foster.

The vouchers can be applied to journeys that suit the traveller. They can be future-dated, customised as personal gifts and can also be used in combination with credit cards and other forms of payment.

Airlink gift vouchers can be purchased at any time and, unlike traditional airline loyalty mileage redemption programmes, do not require customers to earn and accrue miles. Also, the gift vouchers can be made out to anyone and any unspent balance can be put towards future travel either for the voucher holder or someone they chose to nominate.

To manage its innovative gift voucher programme Airlink has partnered with Amadeus, the global travel technology provider and Qwikcilver, an end to end prepaid and gift card solutions provider.

“Through Qwikcilver, we have deployed our state-of-the-art Asset Manager solution and with Amadeus, we have tailored it for Airlink’s gift voucher programme. We are very proud to be working with Airlink, which is widely regarded as Southern Africa’s leading airline,” said Amrish Rau, CEO, Pine Labs Limited.

Maher Koubaa, EVP, Airlines, Europe, Middle East and Africa, Amadeus comments, “As travel returns, any opportunity to engage with people’s appetite for travel will be key to secure growth in our industry. In this respect we’re happy to work with Airlink to include its gift voucher program into the Amadeus Airline Platform. Our partnership with Qwikcilver will power more convenient and flexible journeys for Airlink’s customers. We look forward to further innovating together – as our platform ecosystem enables both airlines and partners like Qwikcilver to jointly collaborate in an open and agile way.”

About Qwikcilver

Qwikcilver, a subsidiary of Pine Labs, is headquartered in Bengaluru, India, with offices in Dubai, Singapore, and Sydney. Qwikcilver manages over 1.1 billion transactions annually. It is the definitive one-stop-shop for different variants of prepaid programs, digital and digitized gift card programs, promotion programs, loyalty programs, discount programs and the like. The Qwikcilver platform has been successfully deployed across the world at our retail partner stores and online as well. Qwikcilver offers a completely secure, banking standard, transaction management platform that operates simultaneously across multi geographies, multi time zones and supports multi currencies in real time. Pioneering and creating new markets requires great flexibility and innovation. To know more please visit www.qwikcilver.com

About Pine Labs

A leading merchant commerce platform, Pine Labs serves prominent large, mid-sized and small merchants across Asia and the Middle East. The company’s unique cloud-based platform enables it to offer a wide range of payment acceptance and merchant commerce solutions including enterprise automation systems such as inventory management and customer relationship management. Its stored value platform includes issuing, processing, and distributing digital gift cards for corporate customers around the world. In April 2021, Pine Labs acquired Fave, a consumer fintech platform that provides a smart payment app to the smart generation of consumers looking to pay and save. Fave is currently operational in 35 cities across Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia and is also available in India. Incorporated in Singapore, Pine Labs’ key investors include Sequoia India, Actis Capital, Temasek, PayPal and Mastercard. To know more, please visit www.pinelabs.com

About Airlink

Airlink was established in 1992 and is an independent, privately-owned, full-service premium airline. Choice and reliability are Airlink hallmarks, with the airline serving more than 45 destinations in 13 countries throughout Southern Africa, Madagascar and St Helena Island*.

Airlink is ranked as South Africa’s most punctual airline, with its fleet of more than 50 modern jetliners achieving a 98.22% average on-time performance** for the year to date. Airlink is an International Air Transport Association (IATA) member and accredited under its safety audit programme.

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