Hopper’s Post

Hopper x Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation – SMBC Group, Japan's largest credit card issuer, is partnering with HTS to launch a next-gen travel booking platform natively within their environment! Within this partnership, HTS will support SMCC on their mission by broadening their offering outside of banking by building synergies between financial and travel services. This goes beyond a standard travel solution, by incorporating smart travel tools that remove friction, save time and money - which has proven to create customer stickiness and loyalty. Hopper's global network of bank and credit card partners now includes Capital One, Nubank, Commonwealth Bank, Lotte Card and SMCC. Collectively these groups finance 200M customers who spend $1T annually on credit cards. It's exciting to see the traction HTS is having with #FinancialInstitutions around the world! Where it's clear that #Banks are looking for full stack integrations with embedded loyalty to really move above and beyond to support their customers for the long run.  Watch this space - more to announce in the months to come! 

How I turned 56,000 Amex points into $10,000. Folks this is how valuable your credit card points can be and why you should stop using them in the banks travel portal. This is how I booked a $10,000 ANA first class flight from Tokyo to San Francisco for only 56,000 Amex points. For perspective this same flight booked through the Amex travel portal would have been over 1,000,000 points, almost 20X’s as much! How I booked this flight: 1️⃣ Searched a site called Seats.aero to find flight options from Japan to USA. Seats.aero is a great resource for looking upward flight possibilities. It’s not a perfect site but a very helpful tool. 2️⃣ Found the first class flight that I wanted from Tokyo to San Francisco. 3️⃣The flight showed up bookable with United but it was flying on ANA (a Japanese airline) as they are both Star Alliance partners. The United miles price: 110,000 miles 4️⃣ However, I knew I that Virgin Atlantic was also a partner with ANA (though they are not a Star Alliance partner😆) so I called their customer service to see how many miles the same ANA flight would be through them. I knew to call Virgin Atlantic as ANA flights do NOT* show up on their website (nice little secret 😎) but customer service reps can book them them over the phone. 5️⃣ The Virgin rep found the same ANA flight for 72,500 miles, almost 40,000 miles cheaper than booking through United! But wait, it gets better… 6️⃣ I knew Virgin was also currently offering a 30% transfer bonus promotion for transferring points from Amex to Virgin. Thus I only needed to transfer 56,000 Amex points! Half of the United Airlines price! 7️⃣ So while on the phone with the Virgin Atlantic rep, I went into my Amex account and transferred the points to my Virgin account. This took me all of about 30 seconds. 8️⃣ Then I finalized the booking on the phone with the rep. Easy peasy, now i'm on my way to flying one of the best first class products in the world. This puts me at over $80,000 in points travel I’ve booked so far this year. ---- Note, flight booked is not flight shown in my picture (this is Singapore Airlines business class). I will be flying above booked ANA flight later this year.

Offering travellers options to pay for their trip #ATPSAPAC There are many reasons why a #payment fails, or a transaction may not come through if a traveller isn't finding what he or she is looking for so decides not to pay or is unable to pay. One reason behind a failed transaction can be insufficient funds available via a credit card for a high-ticket item like air travel. The other reason could be a family or a group planning a trip together, but if one traveller had to pay the entire cost on one credit card at checkout, it could lead to #cartabandonment. Airlines are increasingly looking at these aspects and implementing solutions to improve the checkout experience as well as the conversion rate. During #ATPS2024 in London this year, Air Europa and Hands In demonstrated how they have come up with payment-related offerings to overcome practical hurdles. For instance, in case of a group booking together, let the lead booker split a payment equally, and then allow this individual to share a link with others on the same trip to wrap up the transaction. Only a single PNR is created. "This way passengers are allowed to split the full payment with other travellers that are part of the same group travel at checkout, ensuring everyone pays their fair share without anyone having to front the entire purchase," said Yago Casasnovas, Air Europa, who said the plan is to reduce payment failures. Another solution introduced is about the number of cards one wishes to split a payment, customer authorizes amount on each card, and then funds are passed to merchant account, explained Samuel Flynn, CEO, Hands In. This way merchants can facilitate greater spending power by allowing passengers to split costs over multiple cards. Such options are apt as they look at pain points from a traveller's perspective. Also, they exemplify the much-needed agile approach contributing to novel initiatives in the #travelpayments arena.   How are airlines in Asia looking at the preferences of travellers in this region? Hear from experts at the upcoming #ATPSAPAC in Phuket, Thailand (20-21 August, 2024): https://lnkd.in/gHGrNw84 Ritesh Gupta Christopher Staab Raul Patel Lance Blockley #travelpayments #paymentprocessing #paymentorcestration #creditcards

Ultimate Travel Credit Cards Comparison: Chase vs Citibank vs Amex Get the inside scoop on the top travel credit cards from Chase, Citibank, and Amex. Discover the benefits, transfer partners, and value for your buck. Find out which card suits your travel needs best and start earning points for your next adventure. #TravelCreditCards #ChaseVsCitibankVsAmex #TravelRewards #CreditCardComparison #PointsEarning #TransferPartners #TravelBenefits #ValueForMoney #TravelHacks #RewardPoints

Continuing the Financial Services push into Travel, and experiences more broadly, Capital One, American Express & Chase increase focus on creating Lounge experiences for customers #financialservices #payments #fintech

It's GO time! Literally. It's prime time for credit card travel booking sites with dedicated travel site campaigns rolling out to coincide with the ramp-up in spring/summer travel. ✈ In March, Chase launched its "Where Travelers Go" campaign encouraging travelers to "Dream, discover and book at Chase Travel."🏨 In April, Citi launched a new Citi Travel Newsletter with "trip ideas, travel trends and more" encouraging Citi customers to book via the Citi Travel portal. 👇👇 💡With consumers cutting back on goods in favor of experiences and hybrid work arrangements encouraging them to travel more, US passenger traffic is estimated to reach an all-time high in 2024, according to trade group Airlines for America. Last week Delta Air Lines reported that it expects summer travel to fuel a record second quarter in terms of revenue. Card issuers like Citi, Chase, Capital One, Amex, Credit One, SoFi, HSBC (who am I missing?) have been launching/relaunching/updating/partnering to the point where having a travel booking site has almost become table stakes for serious contenders in the travel credit card space but so far the extent to which these sites have been promoted or integrated into card marketing has been mixed. Americans are booking trips and it's time to put those travel site investments to work. #marketing #advertising #emailmarketing #socialmediamarketing #travel

New research from Airwallex and Skift reveals 67% of Australian travel companies see their profit margins eroded by inefficient payment systems #australianfintech #fintech #fintechnews #finance #financialtechnology #technology #tech #technews #travel #payments #paymentsystems #digitalpayments

ECTAA Travel Payment Summit 2024. How can we protect the whole travel value chain at an acceptable cost? What will be the impact of the new EU Package Travel Directive? Looking back at a very interesting event bringing together payment stakeholders from across the travel ecosystem: (a.o.) travel agencies, tour operators, airlines, suppliers, EU regulators, associations, consumer protection schemes, card schemes, Trust / Insurance providers, card acquirers, B2B & B2C payment providers and consultants. Congrats Christian Moeller, Eric Dresin and team for a great first edition of this event! #b2bpayments #travelpayments

Trying to choose between the #AmexPlatinum and the #ChaseSapphireReserve credit cards for travel? See which card is best for you. https://lnkd.in/g7fdHXiy #creditcards #travelcard #rewards #amex #chase For those who know me well, you know I love all things finance-related. I started The Money Crab to have a place to write about credit cards, bank accounts, and other personal finance topics. When friends or family members have questions, I usually use those as prompts for a post which is how this post came to fruition. I don't receive any referral fees for the cards mentioned in this post and I do not hold either of these cards. I don't travel much (I have a 3-year-old and a 6-month-old) and I don't believe in paying annual fees for credit cards as it just doesn't align with my spending habits. However, this post is meant to be informative and educational for anybody seeking the best travel credit financial goals.

Shoutout to The Wall Street Journal for featuring my wife Trisha Elegino, MD and I in their article about how the growing trend on leveraging rewards points on credits cards as part of your daily expenses! 💳 💭 Long story short: My wife and I run essentially everything on our American Express Platinum Credit card We pay it off in full as we would normally pay for all of the expenses via debit anyway so interest is rarely an issue. We enjoy the rewards benefits that comes from it (TSA, CLEAR, hotel benefits, lounges, food, drinks, subscriptions etc). All things we would normally pay for regardless based on our lifestyle We then use those AMEX points to exchange it for flyer miles at respective airlines that goes towards countries/places we would love to go! Many times there are promotions and multiples to these points which ultimately cover a large part of our expenses while traveling. The flights! So in short - we accumulate enough points to travel 2-3 times or more a year for our flights depending on location, time, and how boujee we decide to be. All for spending it on expenses we would normally spend it on regardless. Now I recognize there is a whole other side of the argument of.. "what if you lose track of your balance" "disciplined to pay it off in full etc" Personally, that has never been an issue for us and every person is different so definitely weigh out your options. I will be sure to drop the link in the comments for you to read the full story! Linkedin folks, what has been your best trip you used rewards points to go to? 🏝 Where should we travel to next? ✈ (P.S, we'd LOVE to travel to more Asian countries) Favorite #airlines? Feel free to give them a tag! #travel #rewardspoints #creditcard #personalfinance #airlinepartners #amex