Expedia to Power Travel for Mastercard-Connected Banks

25.08.2023 - 13:42 / skift.com / Dennis Schaal / Peter Kern / Ariane Gorin

Expedia Group and Mastercard are teaming to power a loyalty points redemption program that enables banks and credit unions that issue Mastercards to enable their cardholders to redeem credit card loyalty points after booking Expedia-provided trips.

Mastercard has partnerships with numerous co-branded card issuers, including Chase Card Services, Citi Retail Services, and Capital One, for example, that can potentially tap into the Mastercard-Expedia Group loyalty services, although some of these Mastercard partners already use rival travel providers.

Hopper, for example, is the travel provider for Capital One Travel.

The Mastercard-Expedia Group partnership has Expedia providing a booking template, which it calls its white label template technology, and Mastercard chips in with its digital redemption solution.

The partnership means that travelers who have co-branded Mastercards from participating banks can redeem Mastercard points when they book their trips.

Expedia Group made the announcement Tuesday at its Explore 23: Connect partner conference, which moved for the first time from its traditional Las Vegas venue to Expedia Group headquarters in Seattle. Expedia Group moved into the building in 2019, several months before the onset of the pandemic.

The Mastercard partnership was one of a series of Expedia announcements touting its business to business segment, which saw its revenue grow 55 percent year over year in the first quarter to $668 million.

Expedia’s business to business segment, which includes partnerships with major banks, airlines and hotel chains such as Marriott, IHG, Hilton and Accor, is a key part of Expedia’s growth strategy. Business to business revenue accounted for 25 percent of Expedia’s total revenue in the first quarter.

Expedia stated that more than 400 million people tied to the loyalty programs of major banks, airlines and hotels benefit from the company’s white label template and API solutions, which provide connectivity to partners.

“The demand for this business continues to be strong as evidenced by our new partnerships with Mastercard, SoFi, and some of our biggest partners,” Expedia Group CEO Peter Kern said in a statement.

He said the company’s business to business segment is poised to grow further “as we continue to establish our tech as the primary operating system for the travel industry.”

Rivals, such as Booking Holdings and Hopper, may have something to say about such hoped-for dominance as they have struck many such business-to-business deals of their own.

Ariane Gorin, president of the company’s Expedia for Business, said in the announcement that Expedia’s technology assets, which include artificial intelligence and machine learning, have “grown