Paypal teams with Sabre and Mindrtrip on AI travel platform
PayPal Holdings, Inc. (PYPL) is partnering with Sabre Mosaic (SABR) and Mindtrip to launch a new agentic AI travel booking platform, which the companies are calling the first of its kind for the travel industry.
The initiative will combine Mindtrip's agentic consumer platform and PayPal's agentic commerce capabilities with Sabre Mosaic's AI-powered travel solutions that power the shopping, booking and servicing steps.
According to Sabre, the goal is to replace the fragmented, multi-step booking process with a "single, intelligent enterprise" that moves seamlessly from the first step to the last. The product is expected to launch in the second quarter of this year.
Travelers will be able to book their trip using an AI-powered assistant on Silicon Valley startup Mindtrip's platform.
On this platform, users can describe their destination, timing, budget and travel preferences and the assistant will return personalized flight and hotel options. They can then complete their bookings and pay for the trip, and also handle post-booking management such as making changes to their itinerary.
PayPal's digital wallet will provide identity verification and will also offer Buy Now, Pay Later options through its PayPal Pay Later solution.
“We believe consumer behavior will continue to shift towards conversational commerce, and we see our role as helping the travel industry seize this opportunity,” said Garry Wiseman, chief product and technology officer at Sabrein, in a statement.
PayPal has been ramping up its AI solutions, acquiring multi-orchestration platform Cymbio last month in order to boost its agentic commerce capabilities. Cymbio's platform allows merchants to sell across different agentic platforms.
It first launched its agentic commerce technology last October, calling it a way "to enable the first wave of commerce capabilities for the emerging world of AI-driven shopping."
Michelle Gill, GM of small business and financial services at PayPal, said in a statement that integrating its agentic commerce technology into Mindtrip's platform will give travelers "more choice, control and confidence" when booking their trips.
“This next generation of agentic AI finally connects discovery to decision-making and booking without leaving the experience," she said.
It's been a rough stretch for PayPal, which last week named Enrique Lores as president and CEO, replacing current chief executive Alex Chriss. Lores is expected to take over at the beginning of March.
In a press release announcing the new appointment, the company said that although "some progress has been made in a number of areas over the last two years, the pace of change and execution was not in line with the Board's expectations."
PayPal's stock has been downgraded four times since December and has seen its price target cut by 14 of the analysts covering its shares.
Despite being the world's largest e-commerce payments company, Wall Street appears to increasingly see it losing ground to its competitors, with Truist Securities analyst Matthew Coad saying in a client note earlier this month that "we believe the majority of the issue for PayPal is that their branded checkout is priced too high vs peers" and that the company "has a worse UX as well."
PayPal's shares have plunged more than 48.8% over the past year.