Across more than 220 global markets, Airbnb primarily relies on card-based payments for bookings. To reduce checkout friction, improve accessibility, and increase adoption in international markets, Airbnb introduced trusted, locally preferred payment methods(LPM) as part of its “Pay as a Local” initiative. The effort enables guests to choose payment options that align with regional preferences while allowing engineering teams to scale support for new methods more efficiently.
As part of the Payments long-term architecture initiative, Airbnb moved from a monolithic system to a domain-oriented services architecture. Core domains cover pay-ins, payouts, transaction fulfillment, processing, wallets, incentives, issuing, and settlement. The processing subdomain integrates with third-party PSPs via a connector and plugin framework, supporting API and file-based integrations, reducing effort and accelerating onboarding across markets.
Supported LPMs include country or region-specific digital wallets (M-Pesa, MTN MoMo), online bank transfers (Online Banking Czech, Online Banking Slovakia), real-time or instant bank payments (Pix, UPI), and local payment schemes (EFTPOS, Cartes Bancaires). According to Airbnb engineers, this modular approach significantly reduces the time and effort required to onboard new providers across different markets.
Airbnb analyzed the behaviors of 20+ global LPMs and identified three foundational payment flow archetypes: redirect, asynchronous, and direct. Redirect flows send guests to a third-party app or website to complete a payment and return a confirmation token. Asynchronous flows, such as QR-based payments, notify Airbnb via webhooks after the transaction completes externally. Direct flows allow guests to enter credentials within Airbnb’s interface for immediate processing. Standardizing these flows into reusable archetypes reduced engineering effort and simplified the onboarding of additional providers.
Local Payment Method Flow Archetypes: Redirect, Asynchronous, Direct( Source: Airbnb Blog Post)
To manage multi-step interactions across providers, Airbnb built a processor-agnostic Multi-Step Transaction (MST) framework. MST defines PSP agnostic steps for authorizations, redirects, confirmations, and captures, providing a consistent orchestration layer that handles both internal and external payment interactions. This ensures reliability across flows that involve app switching, session hand-offs, and asynchronous confirmations.
Integration and maintenance are further streamlined through a centralized YAML-based payment method configuration. This single source of truth defines eligibility rules, input validation, refund policies, and UI rendering instructions. Backend services and the checkout widget reference this configuration dynamically, making new payment launches largely declarative and reducing errors.
Airbnb payment config before and after replatform( Source: Airbnb Blog Post)
Testing and observability were expanded for complex payment flows. An in-house PSP Emulator simulates redirect and asynchronous methods, enabling end-to-end testing without external sandboxes. A centralized monitoring framework captures metrics across clients, backend, PSPs, and webhooks, with standardized alerts for rapid issue detection. Metrics auto-enable for new methods, allowing engineers to trace problems end-to-end. This ensures consistent reliability across diverse flows and supports the scalable rollout of additional local payment methods worldwide.
Airbnb PSP emulator flow( Source: Airbnb Blog Post)
The Pay as a Local initiative had measurable business and technical impact. In markets where local payment methods were launched, Airbnb reported an increase in bookings and engagement from new users. Engineering teams reduced integration time for new providers through reusable payment flow archetypes and a configuration-driven approach. Observability improvements, standardized testing, and streamlined escalation processes strengthened reliability across the platform. The combination of modular services, multi-step transaction orchestration, and centralized configuration enabled faster provider onboarding, lower maintenance overhead, and a more consistent, localized checkout experience for guests worldwide.
