Payments startup Banked has teamed up with British Airways Executive Club to allow people to collect Avios, the reward currency of the Club, simply by choosing to use Banked when they checkout online.
Banked was launched in 2018. By offering payments in real time, Banked enables merchants and customers to receive money from transactions as they happen, meaning they no longer have to wait days and weeks to see the funds. It is already integrated with most UK banks including Barclays, HSBC, Santander and NatWest, as well as leading challenger banks Monzo, Starling and Revolut. Individuals can use the free Banked app to create payment links, and start requesting money from anyone, for anything, without sharing any personal banking details.
In May of this year, during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, the fintech managed to launch out of beta after securing another €2.69 million in seed funding. Their total raised is now around €6.13 million.
Thanks to its new partnership, consumers who have set up a British Airways Executive Club membership will be able to collect Avios every time they make an online purchase with a Banked merchant, simply by choosing to pay with them during the checkout process. Customers simply input their British Airways Executive Club number in the Banked checkout before being redirected through to their banking app for verification – allowing customers to collect and then spend their Avios on rewards such as flights, upgrades, hotels, car hire and more.
This tie-up is a crucial milestone in Banked’s mission to build a new and improved digital payments network which challenges the dominance of current providers. Several high-profile retail businesses are already planning to integrate the Banked and Avios checkout option into their payment systems, with potential benefits for merchants including increased customer loyalty, better conversion rates and a higher average order value. Integrating the opportunity to offer Avios will require businesses to adopt Banked’s account-to-account payment software. This was launched last month and offers businesses a faster and more secure way of making and receiving payments in real time, with just 0.1% processing fees – a fraction of the market rate.
Brad Goodall, Banked’s CEO said: “The partnership between Banked and the British Airways Executive Club is an enormous step forward for us as we expand our new digital payments network. With 78% of consumers making purchasing decisions based on loyalty points, being able to offer Avios through the Banked network will help our merchants increase conversion rates and improve customer loyalty.”
