Steven Lim, FinTech Program Director at HBX Group, shares how they are scaling global travel one smart payment at a time. More than a travel distributor, HBX is a global B2B travel technology and marketplace company that connects the travel ecosystem.
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Transcript
Hi, I'm Steven Lim. I'm from HPX Group and I'm a FinTech Program Director there.
1. Where do you see the biggest friction in cross-border payments for the travel industry?
I believe the problem is the same. There're too many players. It's quite a fragmented market and too many in the supply chain, the payment chain. In itself, it's the integration that's causing the cross-border payment to not be smooth. And then also, the consumer is also feeling it because the banks want, every player wants their margin. It's a very low margin business. So, everyone's squeezing everything they can to get the profit margin up.
2. From your role at HBX, what’s one thing businesses often overlook when it comes to payments?
The payment side is mainly, think, sometimes you have to concentrate actually on the consumer, the traveller itself. Sometimes people introduce friction points, then it's not a smooth journey. I want that in my local currency versus then the hotel wants it in their local currencies, then that's where the friction point gets confusing, especially for the traveller itself. And a lot of hotels from the FX point of view wants to lower their risk. They don't want to take a currency that they don't know about, so on and so forth.
That's why a player like us, we are a HBX Group. We are a travel tech company. So you can actually go to a bank for it. Or we are being one of them, the HBX Group. We provide that service for our hoteliers, leverage our expertise, using partners like yourself at Antom to deliver that (payments solution) to market.
3. FX volatility can be tough in global travel. How does HBX manage that risk and stay agile?
That's part of our secret sauce, right? So, we are looking at continuing our partnership (with Antom) to hedge in (in FX). Because in a foreign exchange world, this is volume game. So, when our partners do not have that volume. We are kind of the aggregators of that volume, along with yourself (Antom), to actually provide a better FX de-risking policy for our clients.
4. What’s one payment trend that travel platforms should pay close attention to this year?
I believe it's sustainability. I think that's influencing how people travel. And then from that, then AI agents also, which we talked about today. Recommendation agents are coming in or they're inserting in to say, “hey, take that.” We haven't reached the step of automated payments or enabling an AI agent to make that purchase for us. So, I think that's coming. And we have to see how we can support that.
5. If foreign exchange were a holiday, what kind of trip would it be?
Foreign exchange, if it's a holiday? In the FX world, it's about whether you're on the right side of the trade. So, it could be a beautiful, perfect five-star holiday if you're on the right side of the road. Or you'll be struggling to get home. That's if you get it on the wrong side of the trade.
