Flights platform Etraveli Group is launching a fintech product to help combat online fraud.
Precision, as the technology is called, is the first “and very obvious one to roll out” among a number of fintech products CEO Mathias Hedlund said the company wants to launch.
Amadeus‘ payments business Outpayce is the first partner for the technology, which will offer Precision as part of the services it provides to airlines and other travel suppliers.
Hedlund described the solution as a risk management-as-a-service product and said Etraveli had been using similar technology internally for about 20 years. The technology is also used where Etraveli is the merchant of record in some markets as part of its flights partnership with Booking.com.
“It is a significant part of why we have been growing so nicely these last 10 years, because we have put a lot of effort into very holistically managing fraud. If I look at different players in the market, they focus on one API. They don’t want fraud or want to lower fraud costs, but it’s a combination of letting through as many transactions as possible and pushing sales as much as possible while stopping as much fraud as possible and having as low fraud management cost as possible. It’s those [key performance indicators] in every decision being weighed together.”
Hedlund added he believes Etraveli is better than competitors at managing fraud through its data and “internal orchestration and logic that can reach the same results or even better without blocking 5% of transactions.”
The move is part of Etraveli’s strategy to move to being a B2B company with the company currently split evenly between consumer and B2B, according to Hedlund. Projecting forward five years, he believes B2B will be closer to 80% of business.
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Etraveli’s partnership with Booking.com is a significant and growing part of its B2B business, but its recently announced extended deal with Amadeus will drive further growth, he said.
Booking.com has been using Etraveli’s flights content since late 2019 and announced the acquisition of Etraveli Group for €1.6 billion in late 2021. The deal was vetoed by European regulators in September 2023, but Booking.com has said it will appeal the decision. The online accommodation platform has also said the partnership stands until the end of 2028.
This latest deal enables Amadeus to source and distribute content from the flights technology provider. It also enables the distribution company to offer virtual interlining content from Etraveli Group subsidiary Tripstack to travel sellers via the Amadeus Travel Platform. Amadeus-owned Navitaire already has a partnership with Tripstack.
Hedlund described the deal as “huge, because it means that we continue to build on our transformation to a B2B company. Booking.com, of course, was the first really big one that we started to work with, and now we are doing similar things together with another giant in the travel market.”
