Capital One Buys into Travel and Lifestyle
Ten Lifestyle Group
Partners with global financial institutions and premium brands to attract and retain wealthy and mass affluent customers
Now 3 of the top 5 credit card issuers in the USA have embraced travel and lifestyle in their customer strategy.
Capital One has confirmed the acquisition of a concierge service [1] that can help grow its customer metrics including retention, acquisition and spend on card. The Times has reported the purchase price of Velocity Black at $296M [2]. This follows Capital One's $96M 2022 investment into Hopper [3] to grow their travel proposition, resulting in the growth of their customer metrics. Capital One has often been described as the most data-driven bank in the world. These investments are a further ‘proof point’ that travel and lifestyle concierge services drive provable commercial customer metrics in financial services.
Capital One is the fourth largest credit card issuer in the USA [4]. Their investments mean that 3 of the top 5 credit card issuers are strategically invested in concierge to drive customer metrics.
JPMorgan Chase, the largest credit card issuer in the USA, has, since 2020, bought Frosch Travel and CX Loyalty (Travel) [5][7] as well as Infatuation (the restaurant review service) [6]. This is also a commitment by an ambitious bank to leverage lifestyle services to grow customer metrics.
American Express, the second biggest credit card issuer in the USA, pioneered travel and lifestyle services as a customer loyalty and brand-building tool, notably for their Centurion and Platinum cards. They have also continued to invest – buying Resy, the restaurant booking service, in 2019 and are developing their assets across travel and lifestyle.
At Ten, we are the market leader in working with banks globally to use travel and lifestyle services to improve their loyalty and commercial metrics. Ten’s travel and lifestyle platform (digital and high touch) is live in 50+ countries with market-leading banks from NatWest and Barclays in the UK, to SMTC and Credit Saison in Japan and from Westpac in Australia to Royal Bank of Canada and Scotiabank in Canada. In North America, we work with multiple partners from offices in New York, Miami, Denver, Las Vegas and San Francisco.
Please contact us for an expert view on the impact of travel and lifestyle services in the banking, wealth management and credit card markets.
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Notes
The most recent (FY2022) public records at UK Companies House show revenues (after cost of sales) of the acquired concierge service at c. £5.5M (c. $6.8M) with losses before tax of c. £3.3M (c. $4.1M). [8]
The most recent (FY2022) analyst reports on Ten (listed on the London Stock Exchange as ‘TENG’) show a profitable business with annual net revenues expected to be c.£62M (c. $78M) for FY2023.
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