TravelX, a marketplace for tokenized travel products, launched operations on Wednesday with the offering of Argentine low-cost airlines Flybondi.
The platform now offers 2.5 million tickets that are tokenized above the purchase and converted into NFT called NFTickets, Facundo Martin Diaz, head of blockchain services at TravelX, told CoinDesk. After purchasing an NFTicket, a customer can trade, sell, transfer, transfer or trade it through the peer-to-peer system on TravelX, Diaz said.
To buy tickets on the platform, users can deposit money in the TravelX wallet, which is managed by NFTicket, or pay through BinancePay. Diaz also said the company is in talks to integrate other exchanges.
TravelX Algorand Blockchain
TravelX is built on the Algorand blockchain and its architecture is open so that other businesses, such as exchanges or marketplaces, can use the TravelX API to build their own marketplaces. In six months to twelve months, the platform expects to introduce the inventory of more than 60 airlines, focusing on users in Latin America and Europe. Diaz said that in 2023 the company will focus on the United States and the Middle East. In November, the company closed an $11 million seed round led by Borderless Capital, Diaz said, adding that it plans to open a Series A funding round in early 2023. The company has 85 employees. Diaz and Juan Pablo Lafosse founded TravelX, who founded Almundo.com, an online travel site that was sold to CVC Corporation in 2019 for $75 million.
Currently, the platform allows trading using the USDC stablecoin and has no plans to add anything else, although it may eventually integrate the currency created by the airline. , Diaz said. TravelX does not pay any commission when a user buys a ticket on the platform, but earns 2% when transactions are made in the second peer-to-peer market. Airlines keep another 2%, Diaz said.