As digitisation accelerates, US Bank acquires a travel and expense platform to give its customers a single platform for all their needs.
US Bancorp acquired San Francisco-based TravelBank to accelerate the integration of online payments within its banking segment. US Bancorp, the parent company of US Bank announced the partnership after they have worked together for a year.
Last September, TravelBank integrated the travel agency into US Bank’s Instant Card, to create an all-in-one solution for the management of corporate expenses.
The partnership made it simple for businesses to provide virtual corporate cards, control and track spending in real-time, and earn market-leading card spend rebates with safe and convenient contactless payment options.
The new acquisition comes in, months after the credit card giant Capital One invested $170 million for fundraising of online travel agency Hopper. Hopper’s fintech products contribute a majority of its revenues.
Shailesh Kotwal, vice-chair of payment services at US Bank said, “We are focused on giving businesses more confidence, control and convenience in managing payments and expenses. TravelBank will help us accelerate these efforts”.
In partnering with TravelBank, it has seen efficiencies in businesses. The acquisition enables the expansion of the client base and delivers more value to its customers.
Duke Chung, co-founder and CEO of TravelBank said, "We created TravelBank to provide a single experience for expense reporting and travel management. Our combined offering with US Bank will be the most comprehensive expense, travel and payment management solution in the industry".
TravelBank will continue to support its existing clients. Duke will “move over to the bank” during post-acquisition.
US Bank partnered with Chrome River in 2019 to launch an expense tool known as Expense Wizard that combines virtual payments and expense reporting with a chatbot. Bradley Matthews, senior vice president of corporate payment systems said, “You don’t have to remember all these details or dig out your calendar to get these because you already captured it at the time of purchase”.
There are many benefits if consumers bank with US Bank. TravelBank will continue to support any and all banks and card programmes in its service and will initiate future developments based on the experience of all customers regardless of where they bank or which card they utilise for business expenses.
US Bank said that many companies have employee expense reporting and travel systems that are paper-based, not mobile-friendly and require extensive manual work. The all-in-one TravelBank platform easily syncs into common accounting systems, automates this work and can be tailored to meet the needs of each organisation.
The acquisition enables US Bank to accelerate the process of integrating digital payments within the commercial segment. US Bank’s corporate payment solutions include virtual corporate credit cards and tools to improve the working capital.
US Bank helps clients to maximise the working capital benefits of commercial card programme through real-time payments (RTP) to give access to organisations to fund their card accounts.
The bank plans to provide more payment services. The bank said that out of 1.1 million customers, only 308,000 people use its payment services. With 1.1 million business banking relationships, there is a significant opportunity for the bank to deepen current relationships and acquire new customers.