Airline checkout loses close to 9 out of 10 shoppers before they ever pay, and Kameron Bertine's fix isn't a redesign — it's an identity layer airlines were never built to have.
Kameron Bertine is co-founder and CEO of Movmo, a startup building an identity and checkout layer for airlines and hotels modeled on Shopify's ShopPay. The conversation covers the origin of the problem in Kameron's own booking experience, why airline cart abandonment runs as high as 89%, how Movmo integrates with legacy PSS and NDC infrastructure without replacing it, and why Movmo is deliberately holding off on fully agentic booking despite having the technical capability today.
What You'll Learn
- Cart abandonment: Airline booking abandonment runs around 89%, higher than e-commerce's roughly 70-79% and close to ferry bookings at the top of the range.
- Design pattern: Movmo is modeled directly on Shopify ShopPay and payment layers like Stripe Link and Klarna rather than inventing a new checkout behavior from scratch.
- Merchant of record: Airlines care most about retaining the merchant-of-record relationship, so Movmo is built as an identity and checkout layer that sits on top of existing systems rather than replacing them.
- Legacy infrastructure: Movmo is designed to work with whatever PSS, GDS, or NDC infrastructure an airline already runs, since rip-and-replace projects in this industry routinely stall for years.
- Agentic readiness: Movmo could technically ship agentic booking today, but is deliberately sequencing a two-to-three year rollout through express checkout and white-label products first to build traveler trust before letting AI agents transact directly.
- Sales reality: Enterprise airline sales cycles typically run 12 to 24 months, sometimes up to 36, which reframes a two-month first proposal as unusually fast progress.
- Industry priorities: Agentic or AI-driven booking reportedly sits under 5% on airline executives' list of priorities, well behind operations and other concerns.
- Conversion signal: ShopPay profiles reportedly convert roughly 50% better than guest checkout, a gap Movmo is betting will show up similarly in airline booking once identity persists across sessions.
Time-Stamped Highlights
- (00:00) Cold open and episode introduction
- (02:05) The Ecuador-to-Spain booking that started it all
- (03:14) The ShopPay moment: the light bulb for Movmo
- (07:57) 89% cart abandonment and why it happens
- (11:01) What Movmo's early user research actually found
- (14:17) Inside the express checkout flow, explained
- (15:39) Designing the one-click booking experience
- (17:18) The escalator sales funnel at FTE/APEX Long Beach
- (21:52) Legacy rails: working with NDC, GDS, and PSS instead of replacing them
- (23:50) Layla, Gemini, and where agentic booking is really headed
- (31:18) Merchant of record, loyalty, and airline governance requirements
- (33:16) The commercial model and transaction-fee approach
- (36:58) Why Movmo won't launch full agentic booking yet
- (39:17) Biggest surprises: sales cycle length and a 35 NPS award
Guest bio
Kameron Bertine is co-founder and CEO of Movmo, an identity and checkout layer for airlines and hotels designed to reduce cart abandonment and enable persistent traveler profiles across booking sessions. He came from a product design background with prior experience in ERP systems, and founded Movmo in June 2024 after his own frustrating international booking experience. Company:
movmo.io | LinkedIn:
linkedin.com/in/kameron-bertine
About the Podcast
The Travel Tech Podcast features long-form conversations with leaders across travel and technology, exploring how software, data, operations, and distribution come together in real businesses, with an emphasis on tradeoffs, incentives, and lessons that transfer beyond any single company or role.
Host bio
Alex Brooker is the founder of Airside Labs, an AI business that applies aviation-grade testing and compliance rigor to enterprise AI systems, helping organizations build and test AI agents in regulated environments. Before founding Airside Labs, he built and scaled complex software in aviation and safety-critical domains, and he also invests in early-stage technology ventures.
What is Travel Tech Podcast?
The Travel Tech Podcast, hosted by Alex Brooker, features long form conversations with leaders across travel and technology. The show explores how software, data, operations, and distribution come together in real businesses, with an emphasis on tradeoffs, incentives, and lessons that transfer beyond any single company or role. Alex Brooker is an industry veteran with experience in aviation, start up to exit, and AI transformation.