Fintechs Are Taking Over Travel: The Rise of a New Digital Ecosystem

Deepak Gusain, COO at Cartex, explores why fintechs are taking over travel.

Planning a trip today has become more than just an activity for the end customer. Considering that international visitor spending is projected to exceed $2 trillion this year, it’s one of the most under-monetised financial flows in consumer tech.

The thing is, even in 2026, travelling abroad still means switching between multiple apps to pay for everything, often across different platforms and in different currencies. From where I sit, this fragmentation is an inefficiency that the market won’t tolerate much longer.

As more money flows through travel while the payment infrastructure remains fragmented, it naturally becomes a desirable target for fintech. Not just to make the experience smoother, but to capture a large part of the financial layer behind it, giving rise to what we now call “TravelTech.”

A lucrative piece of the pie

Travel has always been a global industry, and as the world becomes more interconnected, it grows even more attractive in terms of fund volumes involved and how they can be redistributed. In 2025, this sector was already valued at hundreds of billions of dollars, and it continues to grow, expected to reach almost $1.4 trillion by 2030.

A single trip includes a wide range of transactions: flight bookings, hotels, upgrades, insurance, currency exchanges — with each having its own margin. Historically, all these expenditures were covered by industry giants like Booking or airline platforms.

But today, from my perspective, this is exactly where fintech firms see an opportunity to compete and claim the entire frequent travellers segment as their customers. So, what’s changing now is not the size of the pie, but who is best positioned to capture it.

Fintechs have an appetite for travellers

One way financial companies are entering the travel industry is by launching full-scale platforms like JPMorgan Chase (Chase Travel) and American Express (Amex Travel), directly competing with traditional online travel agencies like Booking Holdings and Expedia Group.

These platforms represent a new class of travel experience, operating as aggregators that combine multiple travel services into a single interface. From an operator’s perspective, the logic here is clear: whoever owns the interface owns the transaction flow.

On top of that, they attract users with financial perks. When a bank customer completes a trip plan via the platform, they receive reward points or cashback, along with premium benefits such as upgrades or priority services. Through this model, they create a strategic ecosystem that keeps customer spending within their environment, increasing monetisation and customer lifetime value (LTV).

The other path is to embed the travel services directly into the app. Neobanks want a piece of client travel spend too. Many, including Revolut, now offer dedicated travel sections within their apps, where users can purchase insurance or access eSIM services. In practice, many travellers see eSIM connectivity as the true start of the trip — the moment they land in a new country. Control at least this entry point, and you can start shaping travellers’ financial journeys.

The “Buy Now Pay Later” services, already successful in e-commerce, are also tapping the travel industry through collaborations between airlines and fintech providers. For example, Kuwait’s BNPL provider Deema joined with Jazeera Airlines to launch a “Fly Now, Pay Later” option for travellers. Another big cooperation is European fintech unicorn Klarna and Expedia, where users can now split the cost of flights, hotels, and vacation packages into instalments.

Similarly, even cryptocurrencies are now integrating into trip bookings. A growing number of platforms already accept BTC, ETH, and stablecoins as a means of booking hotels and flights, thereby reducing cross-border fees for customers. Surveys show that almost 12% of global travel companies are working with crypto today, which is the highest adoption rate across industries.

The future of TravelTech

As a result, no single player, not banks, not OTAs, not airlines, can fully own the travel experience end-to-end. The complexity and the journey themselves are too fragmented. What we are already seeing, and will continue to see, is a move toward deeper integrations and strategic collaboration between fintech and travel platforms.

At the same time, the competitive edge will come down to control over key moments in the journey: discovery, booking, and, increasingly, in-destination spend. A single trip creates multiple points of financial interaction. The companies that successfully unify these touchpoints into a seamless ecosystem will capture a disproportionate share of value.

But this isn’t just about better UX or higher LTV, though it also is. More importantly, it defines who becomes the primary financial layer for global mobility and who controls the industry.

My view is that within the next few years, travellers won’t think in terms of separate “travel” and “finance” products at all. It will be merged into one, so that the winners will be those who make that distinction disappear by embedding themselves so deeply into the journey that switching away no longer makes sense.