Online travel agency Booking.com is preparing to launch a
co-branded credit card in the United States.
According to a post on LinkedIn, the effort is being led by Jonathan
Rossman, who formerly led card products at JPMorgan Chase and airline loyalty
strategy at American Express and who also worked at Travelport, British Airways
and Sabre.
Booking.com’s career page also lists an opening for a “manager,
co-branded credit card growth and strategy.”
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The job posting says the role is new and “being created to launch and manage
Booking.com’s upcoming co-branded credit card in the US, a top priority market
for the company. This is an exciting opportunity to create and grow a unique
and differentiated credit card for the world’s leading provider of online
travel services.”
It’s not clear when the company will make the credit card available or what, if any, travel perks will be available to cardholders. When ask for more details regarding the card, a Booking.com spokesperson said, “We are really in the early stages of exploration here with no imminent plans to launch.”
For several years, Booking Holdings president and CEO Glenn Fogel has been talking about the importance of payments as part of the company's vision for a "connected trip" and to drive loyalty.
In Booking Holdings' Q2 earnings call in August, Fogel described payments as "the glue" of the strategy and said, "Bring it all together with payments, developing the more we
learn about the customer, with their permission of course, and then providing
them with ... what they may want more than anyone else. So they will always
come back to us for all this." From April through June this year about 48% of Booking.com's gross bookings were processed through its payments platform, up from 38% in Q2 2022.
*This story has been updated with comment from a Booking.com spokesperson.