WeSwap considers selling holidays as it broadens its portfolio

WeSwap considers selling holidays as it broadens its portfolio

Peer to peer currency exchange firm aims to push its Connect product that sells through travel agencies. Continue reading

WeSwap is considering selling holidays and insurance as the peer to peer currency exchange brand broadens its portfolio.

Holidays would be sold by white labelling another provider’s product, said chief marketing officer Rob Stross.

“We recognise the strength of the WeSwap brand,” he said. “We’ve built up the trust of our customers and now we are exploring revenue opportunities.”

With the move in the early stages of development, WeSwap – known for its P2P currency exchange card – will also be focussing on its additional offerings throughout 2018, such as its Connect platform to sell its card through online and retail travel agencies.

The service, launched in June last year, uses a one-click API to integrate onto travel sellers’ websites as an optional extra for the customer after they’ve booked a holiday.

It is so far being used by a handful of OTAs, but a dedicated sales team has now been appointed in a bid to roll the service out more widely.

“We’ve had really good uptake,” he said. “The API is relatively new technology for us but we really believe it is optimising, and simplifying the customer’s journey. We call it one-click because we make sure the customer doesn’t have to input the same information twice.”

WeSwap Connect will be mainly targeted at OTAs, but Stross said high street agents could also get in on the action. They are also speaking to call centres to try and integrate WeSwap extra into the sales process.

Stross said integrating with WeSwap could be an additional revenue stream for agencies as they ponder how to mitigate for now having to pay for credit card transactions following the implementation of PSD2.

“Potentially, there’s a big chunk of revenue that agencies have lost overnight. WeSwap has a good opportunity to fill that gap as a nice value add. We’ve definitely seen extra inquiries on the back of [PSD2]”.

And he said its transfers service, designed to help those sending large sums of money abroad without incurring excessive fees, could also help tour operators and agents booking hotels direct to save costs when making overseas transactions. “We are really, really competitive,” he said.

Other products WeSwap wants to build this year include Travel Cash, launched last year so that customers can get its P2P rates in cash rather than on a Mastercard. Customers exchanged more than £7 million in its first six months.

It also began lending customers cash to spend during trips, and will continue to roll out that service.