As a truly global e-commerce company with business operations in nearly every country and city on the planet, Booking.com’s vision behind creating this new business unit is to further remove financial friction from the travel process, making buying and selling travel-related products and services truly easier for everyone.

Booking.com’s new FinTech unit will be headed by Senior Vice President, Daniel Marovitz, who has been leading the company’s payments products strategy since 2017. He brings over two decades of executive experience in a broad range of fields including banking, social media and e-commerce. With a cross-functional team based in Amsterdam and Shanghai, and plans to expand the unit to 400+ FinTech experts by the end of 2021, the aim is to continue developing new products that strengthen Booking.com’s position as the platform of choice for travel providers and businesses worldwide. Through driving innovations to introduce an even wider array of operational efficiencies and value-added financial products, the FinTech unit will function as an independent business unit within the company, improve the economics of the marketplace for everyone involved and create potential new revenue streams for Booking.com.

“What sets us apart from some of the other major players in the e-commerce space, who essentially operate a collection of domestic business verticals around the world, is the truly international scope and scale of our business,’ says Daniel Marovitz, Senior Vice President of FinTech at Booking.com. “Our Japanese accommodation partners regularly host guests from France, and vice versa. The combination of cross-border and cross-currency transactions is a pain point for the marketplace and therefore an opportunity for us. Markets have vastly different payment practices and methods and bridging the gap between these, helps ease friction and enhances the value we bring as a global intermediary. Travel is different from nearly every other corner of e-commerce, strictly because of the often massive time gap between financial commitment from a customer booking and the time they actually take their trip. Many people book and pay for their travel up to a year in advance, which creates cash flow friction for travellers and providers alike. We will work to find creative solutions to help our marketplace work more efficiently, flexibly and securely for all participants.”