CRED Enters Luxury Travel Market with Launch of Escapes Vertical
- ByStartup Story Team | March 14, 2023
Fintech leader CRED expands into the luxury travel sector with “CRED Escapes,” a curated platform providing exceptional experiences, stays, and exclusive perks to its customers. The platform offers various privileges such as spa credits, room upgrades, and access to theme parks, among others, as CRED continues its streak of innovative launches.
CRED users can use their CRED coins to redeem stays and avail member-exclusive privileges on CRED Escapes, the luxury travel platform recently launched by the fintech company. To provide exceptional travel experiences, CRED will partner with hotel brands and travel partners, and collaborate with experienced travellers to create engaging video content that entices more clients to use the platform. The head of CRED Commerce, Abhay Pruthi, said that the platform aims to provide a hassle-free travel experience for creditworthy users, offering handpicked stays, endless inspiration, and member-exclusive perks.
CRED Escapes has over 300 hotels and resorts available on its platform in 50 different locations. This announcement coincides with CRED’s recent push to expand its offerings and reduce its losses. In the previous month, the fintech unicorn launched CRED Flash, a buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) service, and introduced tap-to-pay for retail payments using credit cards.
CRED introduced a UPI payment feature on its app in October 2022, despite other digital payments leaders offering this service for years. This move is part of CRED’s strategy to increase revenue and generate additional income streams through merchant discount rate (MDR) and interest income. The fintech unicorn’s new vertical launches coincide with rising losses. In FY22, CRED recorded a net loss of INR 1,279 Cr, a YoY increase of 2.4X, while revenue from operations rose 4.4X YoY to INR 393.5 Cr.
CRED faces competition from major fintech players such as Paytm, PhonePe, and Google Pay, but it targets only a small segment of high-credit-score users. By launching its luxury travel platform, CRED may be attempting to tap into the travel tech industry’s market share, currently dominated by players such as MakeMyTrip, EaseMyTrip, and Yatra.
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