Amex Invests in Hotel Software Firm Selfbook

Hotel payment software platform Selfbook has landed a strategic investment from Amex Ventures.

“The American Express brand is synonymous with global travel and payment security, and we are thrilled to have Amex Ventures be part of our investor base,” Khalid Meniri, Selfbook’s co-founder and CEO, said in a news release Thursday (Dec. 8).

“As hotels around the world continue to use Selfbook to offer a guest-first booking experience and secure payments, the investment from American Express will help us deepen our global presence and provide even more effective payment tools for our partners,” he added.

Selfbook lets hotels accept one-click payments on their websites while also targeting fraud and elevating the user experience. The company’s proprietary software streamlines payments for hotels by supporting services like Apple Pay, Google Pay and PayPal, along with traditional credit and debit cards.

The company said it also groups multiple services, like restaurant reservations and spa appointments into one payment flow to drive upsells.

The partnership with American Express follows a March funding round in which Selfbook raised $15 million from investors that include Tiger Global. It’s also happening at a time when a growing number of consumers are using online travel booking, as PYMNTS research has found.

Digital transformation across all 37 activities we track rose 2.7% overall during the second quarter of this year, with travel-related activities such as airfare purchases, hotels/rentals and local transportation seeing the largest gains.

Get the study: How The World Does Digital: The Impact Of Payments On Digital Transformation

The 16% increase in the use of digital tools to reserve airplane seats and hotel rooms across all 11 countries we studied was evident as consumers reported more engagement with travel platforms including Airbnb and Homestay in Q2, as well as a slew of other digital solutions.

“That increase in digital transformation also prompted more consumers to use a variety of local transportation and mobility apps,” the study says, “where we noted a 15% increase in the use of apps to book and pay for train, bus and taxi rides and a 12% increase in the use of apps to book micromobility rides.”