Amadeus has acquired electronic invoice and B2B payment solution provider Voxel.
Voxel, a privately owned company, was founded in 1998, and is headquartered in Barcelona, Spain. The acquisition, which is now closed, sees over 200 Voxel employees join Amadeus.
Enhancing travel payments
Voxel’s Bavel Platform orchestrates an end-to-end electronic payment process. Over 50,000 hotels, 1,000 tour operators and travel companies, and 3,000 restaurants and franchises, across 100 countries, currently use the platform. It is made up of Bavel Pay, Bavel Billing and Bavel Procurement, and handles more than 100 million transactions per year.
Acquisition Benefits
The acquisition is intended to support Amadeus’s vision to deliver a smooth travel payment experience. It is also to complement Amadeus’s payments business Outpayce by enhancing its existing travel sellers’ product suite, while expanding in the hospitality segment.
The addition of Voxel solutions to Amadeus’s existing offering means access to a wider range of payment services for travel sellers and a more automated electronic way to manage invoices for tour operators, TMCs, hotel aggregators and hotels. The acquisition of Voxel will also help Amadeus better serve its corporate customers by further automating the business travel experience, from reservation and payments to expense management. Thanks to this integrated technology, Amadeus plans to better connect the travel industry and reduce manual processes.
Connecting the travel industry
Decius Valmorbida, president of travel at Amadeus, said, “The acquisition of Voxel brings a complementary portfolio of solutions to enrich Amadeus’s end-to-end offering, leveraging smart technology in order to benefit the wider travel ecosystem and industry. Payments are present at every stage of the travel experience. To make the experience of travel better, it’s crucial we ensure smooth, integrated and even invisible payments. We now have a combined team of experts who are passionate about payments, and a breadth of customers who will now be able to leverage the power of Voxel and Amadeus together. This is yet another example of how Amadeus makes travel work better for everyone, everywhere.”
Àngel Garrido, CEO of Voxel, added, “Amadeus is truly at the heart of the travel industry, and we couldn’t be more excited to now be part of the team. Amadeus is global in nature, with travel and technology experts working toward a better door-to-door and connected journey. These attributes, combined with Amadeus’s deep roots in travel, have resulted in a unique opportunity for Voxel and Amadeus to grow faster, and further embed innovative and automated technology; improving not only the processes for travel sellers but also travel providers. The combination of our technology, teams, strong cultural fit and our connections will no doubt bring us one step closer to smoother travel payments.”
David Doctor, CEO of Outpayce, said, “Since the inception of Outpayce, Amadeus’s payments business, the focus has been to strengthen the current end-to-end offering as well as develop an integrated payment ecosystem to which travel companies can connect and access the latest fintech innovations. The acquisition of Voxel allows us to do both. I’m very proud to mark another milestone in our journey to deliver frictionless travel payments. I look forward to working closely with the Voxel team.”
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