Payments and Treasury Platform Sunrate Partners With Travel App Agoda

Hong Kong-based payment platform Sunrate said it will integrate its online travel solution with Agoda’s digital travel booking platform.

“At Sunrate, we are committed to constantly innovate our offerings, so that ultimately, we can be the one-stop B2B partner for the travel industry, by solving different business needs for our travel partners and customers,” Shawn Qin, head of the company’s card business, said in a news release. “We look forward to working with even more partners from the travel industry and beyond.”

Sunrate said its travel solution includes virtual card issuance and can help online travel agencies set spending limits, define usage and choose vendors.

“This gives its travel partners entire control over how spending are allocated and tracked,” the company said.

Earlier this year, Agoda began offering interest-free credit card installments for travel with Visa, becoming the first online travel agency in the Asia Pacific region to introduce this arrangement.

The installment program is available to HSBC Bank Malaysia credit cardholders but is due to eventually be added to customers in Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines, PYMNTS reported.

The new partnership comes as consumers are increasingly turning to digital solutions to pay for air travel and mitigate travel challenges, as recent research by PYMNTS has found.

Consumer use of airline booking apps and websites rose 16% in the second quarter of 2022, making it the fastest-growing digital activity among the 37 such activities we tracked in the study “How The World Does Digital: The Impact Of Payments On Digital Transformation.”

There was also a 15% rise in the use of apps to book and pay for train, bus and taxi rides, making this the second-fastest-growing type of digital activity.

Our report noted that these figures show both a strong desire to travel — in spite of inflation — and the increasing digital transformation of how people pay for travel. Some of the new digital tools available to consumers over this year’s holiday travel season will allow them to pay for and manage their trips via public transportation and air.