Corporate Traveller, the UK’s leading specialist provider of business travel management services to SME companies, today announced a new partnership with BitPay, the largest global blockchain payment provider. The agreement means that Corporate Traveller can accept bitcoin and bitcoin cash payments from its SME customers for business travel bookings.
Using BitPay, payments received via bitcoin or bitcoin cash will settle directly in Corporate Traveller’s bank account within two business days – denominated in GBP. There is no price volatility or risk to the company, and as a push transaction, the user sends the exact amount of Bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash needed to pay the bill. Unlike the high cost of credit cards, BitPay charges 1% to approve the bitcoin or bitcoin cash transaction and settlement.
Corporate Traveller, a division of Flight Centre Travel Group, one of the world’s largest travel companies, has carved a niche in the market for providing travel management services to clients across the UK with an SME-size annual business travel spend of £50K to £2M. Corporate Traveller has offices in 20 locations nationwide and is the largest and only UK travel management company delivering online and offline services purely for this client sector.
As a result of parent company Flight Centre Travel Group’s £10 billion global negotiation strength, Corporate Traveller can give its clients access to unrivalled airfares, hotel rates and product options not normally available to companies with an SME business travel spend.
“We have been leading the way in terms of looking after the specific business travel needs of SME companies for the last 20 years. Our business is built around our customer and will only continue to be successful if we focus on the delivery of a customer service experience that clients will not receive anywhere else. That’s why we continue to evolve and pioneer products and services that are tailored to our clients in order to retain existing customers as well as reach new clients. We identified an increasing demand from our clients for the option to pay in bitcoin for business travel bookings made by our travel consultants. We chose BitPay to manage our merchant processing because they make it easy and handle the entire process of getting the Bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash from the customer and depositing cash into our account. The blockchain industry is growing exponentially and we are excited to be able to offer our clients the ability to pay in bitcoin, whilst having the reassurance of our settlement from BitPay being in pounds sterling. We believe Corporate Traveller is the first business travel management company to offer this payment option to SMEs in the UK.”
BitPay enables transactions from any computer or mobile device and invoices can be generated by an email invoice, or as an online eCommerce transactions, making it convenient and reliable for Corporate Traveller’s customers. As of 2018, BitPay processes more than $1 billion annually from thousands of merchants and B2B customers globally.
“We are excited that Corporate Traveller is committing to offering clients the ability to pay in bitcoin and bitcoin cash We know blockchain payments provide a strong user case for travel, with customers now able to spend bitcoin on corporate travel bookings. We have seen big growth from airlines and travel agents who are tapping into the massive blockchain market.”