Airbnb tilts toward social payments
Monday, 24 Feb, 2017
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Home sharing giant Airbnb has closed out its planned acquisition of tech startup Tilt.
Tilt offered crowdfunding but of more interest to Airbnb is its social payments tech which allows multiple users to splits costs in a single transaction.
It can also handle all-important cross-currency transactions.
The deal for Tilt is an ‘acqui-hire’ which will see cofounder and CEO James Beshara join Airbnb along with most of Tilt’s core team involved in group payments.
Tilt’s future as a stand-alone entity is uncertain as analysts predict it will eventually be shut down and integrated into Airbnb.
"Airbnb and Tilt have a common vision for building community-oriented products that make it easy to bring people together. Tilt’s experience and expertise complement our ongoing efforts to transform the way people travel," Joe Zadeh, Airbnb’s VP of product told TechCrunch.
"By joining forces, we’ll reimagine how groups travel and enhance Trips, our new platform that brings together where you stay, what you do, and the people you meet all in one place."
Tilt had raised about $60 million in funding since its launch in 2012 and in 2015 was valued at as much as $500 million.
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Editor for TravelMole North America and Asia pacific regions. Ray is a highly experienced (15+ years) skilled journalist and editor predominantly in travel, hospitality and lifestyle working with a huge number of major market-leading brands. He has also cover in-depth news, interviews and features in general business, finance, tech and geopolitical issues for a select few major news outlets and publishers.
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