By Ryan Weeks on Wednesday 1 November 2017
Bud enters into partnership with travel rewards firm, weeks after announcing a trial with HSBC.
Fintech disruptor Bud continues to build out its supermarket of financial services. Today, the company has announced an exclusive partnership with Avios, allowing members of the travel rewards programme to access the “invite-only” version of the site. Those who sign up and login to their Avios account via the Bud dashboard will also pick up 500 Avios.
The Bud dashboard already features integrations with Barclays, HSBC, First Direct, American Express, Nutmeg, Zopa and beyond. Users can view and interact with all of these services through the Bud portal.
To this point, Bud has primarily been operating as a B2B service, allowing banks to leverage its technology to sharpen their own customer proposition. First Direct, owned by HSBC, became the first UK bank to push energy and broadband deals to consumers in October via a partnership with the Bud platform.
But while Bud’s D2C offering continues to simmer behind the scenes, the firm seems in no hurry to on-board users. In fact it tends only to use its D2C platform as a means of testing new products and integrations with a controlled crop of dedicated users. One wonders, then, whether there might be more to the Avios integration than meets the eye.
“Adding rewards to our platform brings us even closer to our ambition of linking all financial services in one place,” said Alan Walsh, head of network and partnerships at Bud. “This relationship will see us continue to offer significant value to Bud users, banks, the ever-expanding number of partners in our marketplace and now Avios customers too. It’s the start of a fantastic relationship.”
You can learn more about Bud by tuning into episode 16 of our podcast, Millennial Money Matters.
