Webjet Limited (ASX: WEB) released a presentation today focused on their two recent blockchain innovations, Rezchain and Rezpayments. Here’s what you need to know.
About Webjet
Webjet is a digital travel business spanning both global consumer markets (‘B2C’) and wholesale markets (‘B2B’). It was established in 1998 and now claims to be the leading online travel agency (OTA) in Australia and New Zealand.
Webjet says it was the world’s first to use ‘Travel Services Aggregator’ technology and is now leading the industry in blockchain innovation.
Blockchain Innovations
Rezchain is the blockchain technology that Webjet has implemented to reduce costs and improve efficiency. Ultimately, they hope it will help them achieve their target of an “8/4/4” structure, meaning:
- 8% revenue/total transaction value (TTV)
- 4% costs/TTV
- 4% EBITDA/TTV
Rezchain has been implemented in the B2B sector to manage settlements between hotel suppliers and travel partners. As an example of its usefulness, Webjet took a sample of 40 bookings that were in dispute and found that 70% resulted in a hard loss. Webjet believes that using Rezchain could have avoided 90% of the loss. You can read more about Rezchain here.
The newer innovation, announced today, is Rezpayments.
Rezpayments
Rezpayments is designed for the B2C sector and focusses on reducing costs required to comply with Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standards.
Rezpayments essentially exchanges a customer’s credit card data for a token which is then stored in the user’s system. Because the credit card data never reaches the user’s system, it is not considered in the scope of PCI compliance.
The Webjet OTA and Online Republic businesses have already implemented Rezpayments, which, according to Webjet, “reduces scope of risk impact in our overall environment by isolating our impacted environment for PCI compliance testing”.
Looking Forward
While Rezchain was already known to investors, Rezpayments is an interesting new development and signals the direction that Webjet is heading with its online businesses. Innovation is always a trait to look for in a great business.
Webjet also reconfirmed FY19 guidance of at least $120 million of EBITDA, excluding one-offs from the acquisition of DOTW.
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Disclosure: At the time of writing, Max does not own shares in any of the companies mentioned.
