Pay As a Local

How Airbnb rolled out 20+ locally relevant payment methods worldwide in just 14 months By: Gerum Haile , Bo Shi, Yujia Liu , Yanwei Bai , Bo Yuan , Rory MacQueen , Yixia Mao Across the more than 220 global markets that Airbnb operates in, cards are the primary way that guests pay for stays, experiences, and services. However, to help make our platform accessible to more people, reduce friction at checkout, and drive more adoption, we introduced trusted, locally preferred payment methods — called local payment methods or LPMs. By offering and supporting these payment methods, Airbnb enables guests everywhere to choose what works best for them. In this blog post, we’ll discuss the implementation details behind our Pay as a Local initiative, which allowed us to launch 20+ local payment methods across multiple markets in just over one year. LPMs: What they are, why they matter, and our discovery and selection process Local payment methods go beyond traditional cards and include: Country or