UK payment orchestrator BR-DGE partners with Vibe to fast-track travel payments
Breakthrough payment orchestration provider BR-DGE has today announced a new partnership with Vibe, a B2B travel tech platform that enables online travel agencies (OTAs) to build complete and bespoke booking solutions. At a time when global travel is surging and set to break all-time records, by integrating its platform with BR-DGE’s payment orchestration platform, Vibe can offer vastly enhanced payment connectivity and choice to its travel merchants and their end customers.
As an independently-owned, vendor-agnostic and trusted payment orchestrator, BR-DGE is fast becoming the go-to partner for high-volume enterprise merchants in the travel sector through its modular solutions. Vibe joins the likes of Kenwood Travel and Travel Counsellors as part of a growing cohort of leading travel companies working with BR-DGE to support the delivery of an exceptional end-to-end online payment experience. This follows hot on the heels of BR-DGE’s newly announced capabilities for platform businesses as part of its White Label product launch.
Through a single integration with BR-DGE, Vibe’s merchants will gain enhanced global payments connectivity, stronger platform resilience and stability, more capabilities to drive acceptance optimisation, and an expedited time-to-market. The partnership has already gained interest, with the first OTA merchant signed up to go live with the combined solution in the coming months.
Established in 2007, Vibe’s flexible travel booking solution is designed to simplify and manage the complex needs of travel businesses like OTAs, through intuitive user interfaces to help make travel booking as smooth as possible for end customers.
The partnership is primed to prosper from the huge bounce back in global airline, cruise and hotel bookings following the pandemic. According to the World Travel & Tourism Council, 2024 is set to be a record-breaking year, with travel and tourism’s global economic contribution set to reach an all-time high of $11.1tn. By 2034, the sector will supercharge the global economy with a staggering $16tn, making up 11.4% of the entire economic landscape. Meanwhile, according to Mastercard research, despite ongoing economic pressures, the travel sector is flourishing, with nine out of the last 10 record-setting spending days in the global cruise and airline industry occurring during 2024.
In such a fast-moving industry, companies like Vibe must interact with multiple entities including OTAs, airlines, hotel operators and others that each have their own different booking processes, policies and systems. Vibe’s bespoke booking solution depends on robust, flexible tech that can open access to new payment methods to increase conversions, facilitate dynamic pricing to give the best value to customers, and can withstand rapidly surging transaction volumes running into the hundreds of millions. Recent large-scale payment system outages, including at major airlines and others, have highlighted how travel booking can be thrown into chaos when legacy tech platforms go down.
By accessing BR-DGE’s pioneering payment orchestration tech, Vibe can bypass many of these challenges, as well as access to BR-DGE’s modular platform of over 300 payment methods, providers and solutions. Vibe’s customers will be able to leverage BR-DGE’s intelligent routing and failover capabilities, allowing businesses to easily route transaction volume to the most optimal provider, or swerve system downtime at one provider and route to another available one. They can also leverage acquiring in local markets to improve authorisation rates and boost revenues.
Commenting on the partnership, Tom Voaden, head of partnerships at BR-DGE, says: “After a rough few years, people’s hunger for travel is ravenous. That means travel platforms are handling millions of transactions at any one time, from thousands of touchpoints and merchants. With so many multinational enterprises like airlines and hotels and their differing platforms in the mix, OTAs and booking firms are in dire need of better payment orchestration, especially when cross-border transactions, FX and dynamic pricing are involved. Those are the challenges that BR-DGE’s payment orchestration tech was designed to solve.
“From payment processing to fraud monitoring, smart routing and effortless regulatory compliance, BR-DGE’s payment orchestration pulls together all of these moving parts together to give travel platforms simplified integrations, more interoperability, speed to market, enhanced CX and new growth opportunities. We’re experiencing huge demand from platform businesses who now see the value of using our orchestration layer to deliver more value for their end merchants. We’re excited to be working with Vibe and to see it immediately start reaping the benefits of the BR-DGE platform, creating new avenues for income and enhanced payment experiences.”
Danny Girling, business development and head of partnerships at Vibe, says: “We’re really excited about this partnership with BR-DGE. It’s not just about adding more payment options, but about giving our clients even more flexibility and reliability when it comes to handling transactions. By working with BR-DGE, we’re able to bring even more value to the table, helping our travel merchants process payments smoothly, even during peak times. This partnership is a natural extension of what we already offer, and it’s all about making sure our clients have the best tools to succeed in a fast-paced industry.”
BR-DGE brings together over 400 payment technology solutions in one place for the whole ecosystem, creating value and driving better outcomes for payment providers, their merchants, and consumers.
After breaking its revenue record in 2023 with an incredible 600% growth, BR-DGE’s impressive momentum is gathering pace throughout 2024, including its expansion into the Asia-Pacific region and new partnerships with Trustly, Kount, PayPal, and Discover Global Network amongst others. BR-DGE’s newly launched white-label payment orchestration solution empowers clients with the freedom to choose from a wide array of new services, combining the best components of their own offerings with BR-DGE’s modular payment connectivity, routing, tokenisation, and data reporting capabilities.
