South African startup LayUp has launched a platform that allows users to make bookings with travel merchants and pay over time.
The LayUp software provides travel merchants from hotels to agencies with the ability to provide their customers with an interest-free payment plan for holiday bookings.
Consumers can choose a payment plan, paying small amounts on a monthly basis towards their trips, with the total amount settled before the holiday. It offers an easy calculator functionality and online payment gateway that allows users to book a trip without speaking to an agent.
“With LayUp you can secure your holiday at a fraction of the total cost and break down the payments into smaller bite size chunks. This gives the customer the freedom to pay overtime on their terms,” said chief executive officer (CEO) Andrew Katzwinkel.
If Katzwinkel sounds familiar that is because he also runs another South African startup, Fomo Travel, which he said was the inspiration for LayUp. Indeed, Fomo Travel now uses LayUp’s technology to offers payment plans to its customers.
“We decided to launch a consumer-facing travel agency so that we could learn from our customers and merchants in order to build out technology that actually works in the market and can scale. LayUp is designed to help merchants convert sales that previously would be lost but most importantly it’s a far more economical and sustainable way to pay for goods and services without incurring unwarranted debt,” Katzwinkel said.
