KUALA LUMPUR (May 13): AirAsia Group Bhd is rolling out several initiatives for essential travel including contactless payments at airports, contactless kiosks, Passenger Reconciliation Systems (PRS) as well as enhanced features on its mobile app to help ensure smooth and safe travel experience. 

In a statement today, AirAsia said the airline has set up contactless payment options including Wave payments for AliPay and WeChat at klia2 in Malaysia, and will include other airports gradually. Other options such as BigPay and Touch 'N Go will also be available soon. 

"The contactless kiosks are available at all operating airports across Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia and Japan from today, where guests making their essential travel can print their boarding pass and baggage tag after checking-in online on airasia.com or through the mobile app, ensuring a full contactless check-in process. 

"Another contactless travel procedure will be the PRS, which will be available at klia2, followed soon by other airports in Malaysia where AirAsia operates. The PRS entails no boarding pass exchange between guests and AVSEC (aviation security) as guests only need to scan them instead," it said.

Additionally, AirAsia has also digitised the boarding process by scanning all boarding passes at the boarding gate instead of collecting stubs of physical ones. 

"AirAsia's mobile app will also see an enhancement later this month where guests can scan their passports via the app itself, facilitating a more streamlined user experience and a seamless and contactless self check-in process. There are also plans to progressively add other features such as travel visa scanning capabilities in the near future," it added. 

AirAisa's group chief operations officer Javed Malik said: "In addition to the existing strict safety measures on-ground, such as social distancing markers and Allstars wearing personal protective equipment (PPE), we are pleased to introduce our updated contactless procedures to deliver more secure, safe, efficient and contactless experience for our guests across the region. 

"The safety of our guests and Allstars is our utmost priority and these additional enhancements demonstrate our continued commitment to keep flying safe in the new normal environment for air travel," he said.

At 10.56am, AirAsia shares fell 2.67% or 2 sen to 73 sen, for a market capitalisation of RM2.44 billion.