What Checkout.com & Agoda Are Building Behind Your Next Booking
Hey Payments Fanatic!
You know it’s summer when “I’ll just check prices” turns into a fully mapped-out trip. Or at least that’s how it is for me anyway.
In that gap between browsing and booking, Checkout.com is doing the heavy lifting.
That’s also exactly where Checkout.com and Agoda are now teaming up, bringing AI into the payments layer to improve how travel transactions perform at scale.
The idea is pretty simple: AI is used to optimise routing and approvals in real time, boosting authorisation rates, reducing false declines, and making sure more bookings go through the first time.
In practice, that means fewer failed checkouts, smoother cross-border payments, and fewer of those pesky payment declines that tend to show up at the worst possible time.
And that’s really the interesting part here: the infrastructure underneath travel is becoming just as important as the travel experience itself.
If travel is any indication, payments are getting a lot smarter behind the scenes.
Today’s Payments headlines are just below. See you tomorrow!
Cheers,
Q&A
➡️ Q&A: How AI is reshaping digital commerce in MENA - A conversation with Remo Giovanni Abbondandolo, General Manager of MENA at Checkout.com, and Arthur Bedel. Exploring the findings of the MENA Digital Commerce 2026 report, the discussion highlights how AI, localized payments, and invisible checkout are reshaping digital commerce in the region. Read the full Q&A here
NEWS
🇬🇧 Checkout.com partners with Agoda to deliver AI-powered payment performance for global travel. Through its partnership with Checkout.com, Agoda strengthened its virtual card-issuing capabilities, ensuring travellers can complete bookings smoothly and suppliers are paid without disruption.
🇦🇪 Mashreq collaborates with Mastercard to expand quick remit cross-border payment corridors. Through this collaboration, Mastercard Move will elevate Mashreq's cross-border remittance capabilities, boosting its overall service proposition and allowing customers to send money directly in local currencies across new international corridors.
🌍 Mastercard launches Africa Cybersecurity Center of Excellence to help secure the continent's digital future. The initiative is designed to strengthen cyber resilience, enhance collaboration, and help safeguard the trust that underpins Africa's expanding digital economy.
🌎 Visa makes the smartphone the new cash register for the world’s small businesses. Visa announced new capabilities across Visa Pay, Visa Accept, and Visa Direct that are designed to expand how smartphones can accept and send digital payments.
🇺🇸 Stripe sees a 4x increase in AI-driven sign-ups since January 2025. Stripe says AI-driven businesses now account for around 40% of new sign-ups on its platform, with AI companies reaching revenue milestones 30% faster than comparable 2023 cohorts.
🇬🇷 UPI launches in Greece through a partnership between Eurobank and NPCI International Payments Limited, expanding India’s global digital payments network to 10 countries, enabling Indian travellers to make instant digital payments using their existing UPI apps.
🇬🇧 Santander’s Ebury eyes £100m Lumon takeover. Ebury is reportedly considering the acquisition of foreign exchange firm Lumon in a deal that could value the business at more than £100 million. Backed by Banco Santander, Ebury is pursuing acquisitions to accelerate its growth ahead of a potential IPO.
🌍 BR-DGE raises £10m in funding to accelerate global expansion. The new investment will be used to further enhance BR-DGE’s platform capabilities, strengthen go-to-market activity and drive geographic growth, with significant new market and product launches planned for the second half of this year.
🇬🇧 Paysafe joins the Primer platform to streamline card payments for online merchants. The integration expands global payment routing capabilities, enabling businesses across multiple regions to optimize card acceptance and transaction performance.
🇬🇧 Qliro signs strategic agreement to become PPRO’s Nordic BNPL partner. By offering Qliro BNPL through its platform, PPRO will enable global merchants to easily access a payment method that appeals directly to Nordic consumers. Read more
🇬🇧 Curve uses BigQuery Graph to tackle fraud networks. The UK FinTech uses graph analytics to uncover linked fraud networks by identifying shared devices, payment cards, and contact details across accounts, improving its ability to detect organized fraud at scale.
🇧🇪 Beobank launches Beobank Pay with the integration of Wero for easy, fast, and secure mobile payments. Initially supporting instant peer-to-peer payments, the app is designed to expand into e-commerce, mobile commerce, and NFC payments while strengthening Beobank’s digital payment capabilities.
🇦🇪 American Express and Network enter a partnership to expand merchant acceptance in the UAE. Through this collaboration, local and international American Express Card members are expected to gain access to new locations in the UAE, both in-store and online, broadening everyday spending opportunities.
🇬🇧 RedotPay selects OpenPayd to strengthen global stablecoin payment infrastructure for millions of customers. The collaboration strengthens RedotPay’s payment infrastructure, enabling a more seamless experience for global fund movement so users can navigate between local and digital currencies effortlessly.
🇺🇸 Visa, Stripe, Coinbase, and more than 140 companies have joined the launch of Open USD (OUSD), a shared stablecoin that distributes reserve income across participating businesses. The initiative aims to create a collaboratively governed stablecoin network for payments, liquidity, and digital asset use cases.
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