Travelport has increased its ownership stake in eNett International, its joint venture with PSP International established in 2009 to provide innovative and integrated payment solutions tailored specifically for the travel industry. The company has also invested in the travel management technology company, Locomote, acquiring a 49% share.
eNett
Since the joint venture’s inception in June 2009, Travelport has held a majority stake of 57% while PSP International held the remainder. The business has become a growing part of Travelport’s Beyond Air portfolio and part of the Travelport strategy to redefine travel commerce. Travelport has now elected to acquire an additional 16% from PSP International, raising its holding to 73% in a transaction that values the eNett business at $450 million (€335m).
Meanwhile, PSP International has entered into a long-term agreement with eNett to provide various banking services to the company, including PSP International becoming the primary issuer of Virtual Account Numbers (‘VANs’) used by eNett, which will enable eNett to expand its platform and operating system outside the travel industry.
“eNett is a significant element in realising Travelport’s goal to redefine travel commerce, enabling a range of state-of-the-art and innovative alternative payment methods for B2B transactions that represent a considerable global market opportunity,” said Gordon Wilson, President and Chief Executive, Travelport.
“Travelport felt that the time is right to own more of this growing business and this deal provides the opportunity for the two shareholders in eNett to play to their respective strengths: the banking services expertise offered by PSP International and the travel product supplier relationships and system capabilities that Travelport offers.”
“Following the signing of a significant multi-year extension of our partnership with MasterCard announced last month, this new agreement allows eNett to further leverage the expertise of its respective shareholders as it continues to expand into other markets and verticals around the world,” said Anthony Hynes, eNett International Managing Director and Chief Executive.
“The new shareholding agreement enables PSP to cement its relationship with Travelport at a broader level and for the longer term,” added Rob Bishop, Managing Director, PSP International. “We are looking forward to continuing to provide eNett with access to a range of new and innovative payment services, including more flexible transaction funding models and ongoing support for new products and services.”
Since launching eNett Virtual Account Numbers in 2011, eNett has enjoyed global success, helping to facilitate supplier payments for customers across 47 countries around the world. Using unique MasterCard VANs, eNett provides travel companies with a fast, easy and secure way to pay, or to be paid. eNett VANs reduce risk of fraudulent transactions and improve overall payment, reconciliation and tracking processes.
Locomote
Travelport has also invested in the travel technology company, Locomote, acquiring a 49% share.
Locomote has developed a platform to empower corporations in the seamless management of their travel, authorisation and procurement processes, including corporate traveller profile management, pre-trip approvals and duty of care capabilities. The platform has been designed ab initio for the mobile commerce world by Locomote’s team of developers based in Melbourne, Australia.
In turn, the Locomote platform uses all of Travelport’s Universal Profile, Universal Record, travel policy engine and Travelport’s uAPI (Universal Application Programming Interface), from which it obtains real time access to Travelport’s content, including low cost and network carriers, airline ancillary products, car rental and all of the industry leading, broad range of hotel properties and rates that Travelport now distributes.
The platform has further been developed to enable easy integration of third-party, complementary applications that an individual corporation might want to add to its travel and/or authorisation processes. This includes multiple expense management systems, corporate booking tools and other add on services, however, crucially, all within the same corporate user experience, workflow and data management capabilities.
Gordon Wilson, President and Chief Executive, Travelport, said: “Through this strategic investment in Locomote, we have significantly strengthened our offering to corporates and TMCs from an end-to-end customer experience perspective. Locomote has been, and will continue to be, totally focused on what corporations and their corporate travellers want, in order to make the management of their travel an empowered, improved and mobile user experience, leveraging all of the latest technology and content that Travelport brings.
“We are excited about the reaction received from the initial companies that have experienced the Locomote product line, including the ease of deployment and user adoption. We believe that further assets Travelport has recently acquired, such as the corporate hotel booking company, Hotelzon, will add even more differentiated content to the Locomote offering in the near future.”
Philip Weinman, Chief Executive and Executive Chairman, Locomote, added: “Locomote is excited to have a global partner in travel technology of the scale and reach of Travelport. This is all about giving our corporate travel customers a greater level of control over their own travel programmes. With the Locomote product, powered by Travelport content, we have created a powerful tool that is bespoke, flexible and cost effective. It will save businesses time and money and allow them to make the most of their travel budgets in real time. The platform we have developed is designed to be constantly added to, to keep pace with emerging trends as well as changing corporate customer needs.”
