Netherlands-based travel portal Booking.com’s parent company Booking Holdings, which has just opened an engineering centre in Bengaluru, is working on using artificial intelligence and machine learning to increase the scope of risk management on the site.
The company aims to expand into verifying customers’ IDs, such as passports and driver’s licences, in addition to the current verification of properties for stay.
According to Daniel Marovitz, senior vice president of fintech at Booking.com, this is one of the projects being worked on at the Bengaluru centre of excellence. Booking predicts that by the end of 2022, the centre’s strength, which is currently 20, will increase to 100.
Another project the team here will work on is a forex card that will function like a regular credit/debit card. “When you transact in a different currency, there might be a difference between the actual forex rate versus what is given to you. That will not happen with this card. So, with the FX card, you can not only book your hotel but also shop with it, commute, and pay your restaurant bills. This will be connected to your Booking.com ID,” Marovitz said. Connecting everything to a Booking.com ID will enable users to access facilities like buy-now-pay-later for all their transactions.
Booking plans to tokenize the card in addition to having a physical card. Actual card details are kept private throughout transactions owing to tokenization. Additionally, for greater security, the token numbers are constantly changing.
