Paying Like a Local: How Airbnb Rolled Out 20+ Local Payment Methods in 14 Months

Airbnb pursued the adoption of local payment methods (LPM) to increase payment accessibility and improve booking conversion rates across more than 220 markets worldwide. The goal was to capture users in regions with low credit card usage and minimize friction in the payment process.

LPMs include regional digital wallets (M-Pesa, MoMo), online bank transfers, real-time account payments (PIX, UPI), and local payment schemes (EFTPOS). After researching more than 300 options, Airbnb selected the optimal 20-plus methods through a systematic eligibility validation framework.

The key enabler of this expansion was the Payments LTA project, which decoupled payment logic from the core business. By modernizing the existing monolithic system into a service structure based on Domain-driven design (DDD), Airbnb increased its speed of response to market changes and secured team autonomy.

In particular, Airbnb introduced a connector- and plugin-based architecture to build an environment where new payment service providers (PSPs) can be integrated quickly. Additionally, the multi-step transaction (MST) framework flexibly handles complex payment flows that require multiple steps, such as redirects or strong customer authentication (SCA).