A self-propelled brewery tour through Belgium lets you bike to pints

Upgrade Acquires Travel-focused BNPL Startup Uplift For A Song

Upgrade, a provider of personal credit lines and other consumer financial products, today announced that it's agreed to acquire Uplift, the buy now, pay later (BNPL) vendor, for $100 million in cash and stock.

It's likely not the exit Uplift was hoping for — and a sign of serious consolidation in the BNPL space, which just a few years ago was booming, buoyed by pandemic-era spending habits. Uplift had raised nearly $700 million in equity and debt, securing $123 million at a reported $195 million valuation in its Series C round alone.

In a conversation with TechCrunch, Renaud Laplanche, Upgrade's CEO and a co-founder, said that Uplift initially reached out in May to inquire whether Upgrade would be interested in participating in Uplift's Series D financing as a strategic investor. Upgrade, however, thought a purchase made more sense — and it's tough to argue with that logic. Upgrade arguably got Uplift for a song.

"There's a lot of areas of potential synergy," Laplanche said. "We're already providing BNPL and financing at the point of sale for home improvements and auto purchases, so this is really an expansion of our strategy into travel as another vertical and another significant need of consumers."

Laplanche is referring to the BNPL-style product that Upgrade launched in October 2021, which lets users pay down their debt over six to 36 months with a fixed interest rate. Like many BNPL products on the market, Upgrade's features a checkout option on merchants' websites that allows Upgrade to group a user's card purchases into one lump some and invoice them what they owe over four months.

In Uplift, Upgrade saw a gateway to a previously untapped portion of the BNPL segment: travel. Uplift, Laplanche noted, has a distribution network that includes 300 of the top airlines, cruise lines and hotel chains — a network that'd be tough to build from scratch.

"Travel is a big market, obviously — over $450 billion in annual consumer spending — and a significant area of financing and payments needs for our customers, so we believe there is a great opportunity to keep growing the distribution and user base," Laplanche said.

Uplift was founded in 2014 by Brian Barth, who previously sold his travel startup SideStep to Kayak for $200 million. From the start, the focus was travel, with an emphasis on partnerships with the vacation package sites of United Airlines, Southwest and American Airlines as well as Allegiant Travel Company and Kayak.

Uplift's core offering was installment plans for trips. For example, if a family was considering a trip to Disneyland for a price of $2,000, Uplift might've offered a one-year financing plan with monthly payments of $189 a month.

At one point, Uplift was on track to drive nearly $1 billion in loans — or so the company's president, Robert Soderbery, claimed. And those rosy prospects attracted major backers like Madrone Capital Partners, DNX Ventures and Ridge Ventures. But evidently, business sagged somewhere down the line.

To blame could be general malaise in the BNPL sector post-pandemic, particularly among consumer-focused BNPL vendors.

Klarna, once Europe's most valuable VC-backed company, suffered an 85% valuation cut, from $45.6 billion to just $6.7 billion in July 2022 following an $800 million round. Meanwhile, publicly traded BNPL companies like Affirm and Australia's Zip have seen their share prices plummet; Affirm was recently forced to shut down its crypto unit and lay off 19% of its staff.

Changing consumer spending habits likely played a role in scaring investors away. But the threat of stricter oversight — and rising delinquency rates — undoubtedly had something to do with it, too.

The purchase of Uplift effectively doubles Upgrade's customer base, adding 3.3 million users to the platform, and comes as Upgrade weighs an IPO. Laplanche previously said that Upgrade would aim for a public offering sometime in 2023, but it's unclear whether the company's still committed to that timeline.

Over the past several years — perhaps in anticipation of an IPO, whenever it ends up arriving — Upgrade has sought to diversify its offerings, launching a rewards checking account, a Bitcoin rewards card, a credit card with BNPL-like options and a debit rewards card for everyday purchases. Laplanche says that Upgrade's looking to provide close to $10 billion in credit by year-end 2023.

"Travel has become more expensive in the last couple of years, and we're glad we can provide financing for yet another large expense category, and make that financing more affordable through Upgrade's access to low-cost capital," he added. "This 'merchant network' strategy is a great complement to the direct-to-consumer strategy we've implemented with mobile banking, cards and loans."

Uplift's team will join Upgrade in "various capacities," Laplanche says, moving from their current teams to corresponding teams at Upgrade (e.G. Finance to finance). But mum's the word on the C-suite's new roles.

Caribtours Eyes Full Merger With ID Travel Group In Future

Caribtours owner and chief executive Paul Cleary has revealed the luxury operator plans to merge with the US company that bought a stake in it last year.

Cleary told a Travel Weekly webcast the ultimate aim is for his business and fellow luxury operator ID Travel Group to be brought together more closely.

He said: "The grand plan will be to bring our two companies entirely into a merger when the time is right but not change anything whatsoever operationally."

More: Luxury brands urged to avoid return to pre-Covid price matching

During an interview with Travel Weekly editor-in-chief Lucy Huxley, Cleary said last year's deal with ID Travel Group came about through a 30-year friendship and the US operator had "remarkably similar values" to Caribtours.

"What we're building is a strong, service-led sustainable luxury travel brand," Cleary said.

He added: "For people who book holidays with us, it's business as usual. Behind the scenes, our teams are working much more closely together and there are huge opportunities to bring out the best in each other and learn from each other."

Cleary said he led the management buy-out alongside ID because he wanted to "do things differently".

On the potential for future deals and acquisitions, Cleary referenced last year's purchase of Just Grenada as evidence of what can work.

"We know we can do this, so as opportunities come up it's interesting," he said. "But, equally, we're in the business of selling holidays and we don't want to become distracted too much as all of this takes time and what we like doing is working with travel agents."

Cleary said 2024 is looking "incredibly strong" for Caribtours, but added there is still availability for this October and Christmas.

The trade accounts for around 85% of the operator's business, Cleary said, with agents described as "integral" to the operator's success.

"Agents are part of our DNA," he said, adding: "We speak to our agents every single day, all of us."

More: US operator takes stake in Caribtours [Oct 22]

Caribtours brings direct-sell brands to trade in January [Dec 22]

Expedia In Deal To Power Walmart Travel

Walmart is a giant retailer but it's possible Hopper was a more meaningful client for Expedia. At any rate, Walmart is potentially a significant win, and at least it isn't a competitor.

Dennis Schaal

When it comes to online travel agencies' business to business deals, you may need a scorecard to keep up. In the latest deal, Expedia Group became the power behind Walmart's travel offering.

The companies announced Tuesday afternoon that Expedia Group would be providing properties (900,000), airlines (500+), car rental companies (100+), and activities ("thousands") to Walmart + Travel.

When Walmart members book travel on that Expedia-powered travel site, they are eligible to receive 5% Walmart cash back on hotels, vacation rentals, car rentals and activities, 2% on flights, and "a blended rate" of Walmart cash on vacation packages, the companies stated. That means for a flight-hotel package, the travelers would receive 5% Walmart cash back on the hotel and 2% on the flight.

The Walmart win for Expedia Group's business to business arm, which generated 25% of the company's total revenue in the first quarter, follows Expedia bowing out of a broadly similar partnership with Hopper two weeks ago.

In another development, Hopper won a partnership with Uber in May to provide it with flight inventory and its fintech products, including various price freeze features.

That had to be a disappointment for Expedia since Uber's current CEO is on the Expedia board and was a longtime Expedia Group CEO.

However, Expedia has said in the past that it walked away from a potential Uber deal because the economics didn't make sense.

Walmart, a major retailer that did $611 billion in revenue in fiscal year 2023, has gone through numerous iterations of its travel offerings over the past couple of decades. Going all the way back to 2004, for example, Walmart Vacations offered cruises from National Leisure Group. Walmart's sister brand, Sam's Club, has a travel offering that has been

Expedia handles much of the customer service for Walmart + Travel, whether through its live agents or its AI-backed virtual agent.

---