A single holiday booking can look simple to the traveller and still involve several businesses, markets, currencies and settlement cycles behind the scenes. For the companies that sit in the middle of those transactions, payments have become an operational problem as much as a checkout one.
Sofoklis Limniotis is finTech strategy and solutions director at HBX Group, the B2B travel technology company that grew out of Hotelbeds. He has more than 20 years in finance, including roles at BearingPoint and PwC España, and has spent over a decade in travel, where he has held several payments roles at Hotelbeds and HBX Group, including head of digital payments and E-platforms, head of payments solutions and director pay out.
His brief today is to build new revenue streams from the company’s payments footprint. “I’m focused on building and developing new revenue streams and leveraging the digital footprint of payments with a customer-centric approach,” he said. “I’m passionate about how the efficiency and security of digital payments can help build broader networks and relationships that better align market and company needs.”
Limniotis starts from the structure of the industry itself. “Travel is inherently complex: a single booking can involve multiple businesses, markets, currencies and payment flows, from the initial transaction through to settlement with different suppliers,” he said. “FinTech can help simplify that complexity by making payments and financial management faster, more transparent and more efficient.”
That matters beyond the customer experience, he argued. “Implementing modern FinTech solutions is increasingly critical for businesses to keep up with competition, boost efficiency and profitability while creating seamless, friction-free experiences for travellers.”
What has changed for the traveller
On the consumer side, he pointed to the decline of cash and the growth of digital banks, wallets and mobile banking with real-time currency conversion. “For travellers, one of the biggest changes has been the reduction of friction around how they access and use money abroad,” he said. “Increasingly sophisticated payment solutions have made it easier to pay across currencies, track spending in real time and manage travel finances from a smartphone.”
Expectations have followed. “Travellers increasingly expect payments to be as seamless as the rest of the digital booking experience,” Limniotis said. “That expectation is pushing the travel industry to offer greater choice, transparency and flexibility throughout the customer journey.”
He described buy now, pay later as one expression of that demand. “In travel, where purchases can represent a significant upfront cost, giving customers different ways to structure payments can provide greater choice at the point of booking. We are already seeing travel providers integrate these options directly into the booking journey.”
The B2B side of the booking
The harder problems, in his account, sit between businesses. “While consumer-facing payments have evolved rapidly, B2B travel payments can still involve fragmented processes, manual reconciliation and multiple payment methods and systems,” he said. “The complexity is amplified by the nature of travel itself: a single booking may involve several businesses operating across different countries, currencies, time zones and settlement cycles.”
“These fragmented processes can create significant friction, operational inefficiencies and revenue leakage, which is especially challenging in an industry where efficiently managing margins is critical.”
The pressure is growing as trips are packaged from more providers. “Consumers are increasingly looking for more connected travel experiences, with the ability to bring different elements of a trip together through a seamless booking journey. Behind that simple customer experience, however, can sit a highly complex network of suppliers and financial relationships,” Limniotis said. “As multi-provider partnerships become the norm, there are more places for payments to be sent, and the pressure on these payment systems to route money seamlessly behind the scenes grows significantly.”
He does not see a single fix. “Virtual cards, digital wallets, automated reconciliation and embedded financing can all play a role in creating a more efficient B2B payment ecosystem,” he said. Virtual credit cards (VCCs) and digital e-wallets, in his view, can offer “integrated financing, invoice access and transaction traceability”, while financing assessed on business performance and transaction data can help smaller operators with the seasonality of the trade.
“The real value comes when these capabilities are integrated into the wider transaction journey. Automating payments, reconciliation and invoicing can reduce manual work and improve visibility, while real-time transaction data gives businesses greater control over their financial operations,” he said. “At HBX Group, we see payments not simply as the final step of a booking, but as an opportunity to remove friction across the wider B2B travel ecosystem.”
Transformation without the trend-chasing
For travel businesses weighing where to start, Limniotis cautioned against treating transformation as a race. “Digital transformation doesn’t mean chasing every new trend; it’s about fixing broken processes and optimising them to improve the employee or customer experience,” he said. He argued that partnering with fintech specialists who understand travel can speed up implementation and help keep operations “secure, compliant, and scalable as the business grows”.
“FinTech is no longer an optional upgrade; it is becoming essential infrastructure across both B2C and B2B environments,” he said. “The next stage of FinTech in travel won’t simply be about making payments faster. It will be about making increasingly complex travel ecosystems easier to operate.”
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