ConnexPay Named Travel Innovator of the Year at Phocuswright 2023

ATLANTA, US / November 28, 2023: ConnexPay, an all-in-one payments platform, has won the 2023 Phocuswright Travel Innovator of the Year Award. This award recognizes ConnexPay for breaking new ground and developing new technologies in support of the travel industry.

Bob Kaufman, Founder and CEO at ConnexPay, delivered a presentation on the unique benefits that are inherent to online travel agencies (OTAs) who serve as merchant of record on their incoming customer payments.

“OTAs spend billions of dollars to attract customers. Studies show that customer acquisition costs an average of $20–$50 in this industry,” said Kaufman. “Yet, after spending all that money, when it comes to arguably the most important part of a transaction with that customer — their payment — less than 50% of the time does the OTA serve as merchant of record and actually process the payment from the traveler.”

Kaufman highlighted that serving as merchant of record allows OTAs to retain ownership of the customer experience for things like booking changes, refunds, and returns. Being merchant of record also provides benefits to the customer, as they will see just one transaction on their statement, from the OTA. In addition, the customer’s fraud risk will be reduced since the OTA keeps the customer’s card information and doesn’t pass it through to the airline, hotel, or other supplier.

Kaufman also cited a report from Mastercard and Phocuswright that shows OTAs’ migration from the pass-through payment model to the merchant of record model is massive. OTAs that act as merchant of record posted a 43% CAGR from 2020 to 2022, a growth rate more than two times higher than the overall OTA growth rate.

“Banks put OTAs in the same high-risk category as online gambling and online pornography. Banks don’t like the future delivery risk component of the travel business,” Kaufman added. “In ConnexPay’s unique payments model, we fundamentally remove that risk component because our all-in-one payments solution allows OTAs to accept a customer’s payment, do a fraud check, and make payments to suppliers in a secure, seamless, and profitable way.”

Dishant Khanna, Co-Founder at CheapFlightsFares and a ConnexPay client, attended Phocuswright 2023. “We were sold on partnering with ConnexPay many years ago because their solution is purpose-built to solve the payments challenges of travel companies like ours,” Khanna commented. “This Phocuswright award win underscores ConnexPay’s commitment to helping travel companies innovate and succeed with their business payments.”

ConnexPay previously won Most Innovative Startup at Phocuswright 2018.

In October 2022, ConnexPay secured a significant growth investment totaling $110 million, led by sector-focused growth equity investor FTV Capital to support the company’s rapid growth and global expansion. Adam Hallquist, principal at FTV Capital, commented: “ConnexPay’s unique payments solution continues to see strong demand across the travel industry as well as in key emerging verticals, such as media, insurance, and fintech companies. As ConnexPay continues to achieve new milestones and win in new markets, we are pleased to be working so closely with an innovative company that is committed to improving the payments experience for customers around the world.”

Watch ConnexPay’s award-winning presentation from Phocuswright 2023 in the video below.

About ConnexPayConnexPay is the first company to bring together the two sides of the payment process — payments acceptance and virtual payments issuing — into a single platform with one contract and one reconciliation. The flexibility of this technology allows clients to adopt the full end-to-end acquiring and issuing solution or leverage ConnexPay’s innovative intelligent routing issuing-only platform.

ConnexPay continues to focus on the travel and tourism space, but ConnexPay’s solutions are applicable across a broad spectrum of corporate payment use cases, including insurance and warranty claims, loyalty and rewards payouts, and media and advertising buys.

Founded in 2017, ConnexPay is an industry leader in payments for industries historically viewed as high risk. ConnexPay processed over $10B+ in payments last year on behalf of hundreds of clients around the world. Learn more at www.connexpay.com and follow us on LinkedIn.

About FTV Capital
FTV Capital is a sector-focused growth equity investment firm that has raised $6.2 billion to invest in high-growth companies offering a range of innovative solutions in three sectors: enterprise technology and services, financial services, and payments and transaction processing. FTV’s experienced team leverages its domain expertise and proven track record in each of these sectors to help motivated management teams accelerate growth. FTV also provides companies with access to its Global Partner Network®, a group of the world’s leading enterprises and executives who have helped FTV portfolio companies for two decades. Founded in 1998, FTV Capital has invested in 138 portfolio companies, including Docupace, EBANX, LoanPro, Neptune Flood Insurance, Patra, PlateIQ and Vagaro, and successfully exited/partially exited companies including Enfusion (NYSE: ENFN), Globant (NYSE: GLOB), InvestCloud (recapitalized), RapidRatings (recapitalized), Strata Fund Solutions (acquired by Alter Domus), Vpay (acquired by Optum) and WorldFirst (acquired by Ant Financial). FTV has offices in San Francisco, New York and Connecticut. For more information, please visit www.ftvcapital.com and follow the firm on LinkedIn.

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Media contact:

Liza Amaro

Head of Marketing, ConnexPay

(706) 617-4710

‍lamaro@connexpay.com