, also known as Nubank, a Sao Paulo-based digital bank with more than 80 million customers in Brazil, is partnering with Hopper to launch a new mobile travel booking portal next year, marking the South American company’s entry into the travel category. While Latin America is Hopper’s second-biggest market outside North America, it previously had no presence in Brazil.bookings for flights, accommodations and vehicles to Nubank clients.
Those products, built by Hopper using machine learning that leverages vast data sets obtained by travel booking systems, include the ability to freeze a flight price for days, buy the right to cancel for a full refund for any reason, rebook a missed connection at no extra charge or change a ticket to a different day without forfeiting its full value. Hopper takes the financial risk for the products, leaning on algorithms to dynamically price its offerings in real-time.
Hopper president Dakota Smith said in an interview that the company is set to announce “about a dozen other partnerships” in the next few months, including one in Canada and others in Europe, Asia and Australia. “We’re looking to partner with market leaders who have large credit-card lines of business and an innovative and technology-forward approach, in pretty much every country, every region” globally.
Hopper initially made its name with millennial consumers by building a mobile travel-buying app that predicted the best times to purchase flight tickets inexpensively. It then parlayed its data-focused approach to travel into a prosperous side business by partnering with Capital One to power the credit-card issuer’s travel booking and reward services, starting in September, 2021.
Capital One has also led Hopper’s past two financings, in 2021 and 2022, when the company raised a combined US$266-milllion. Other Hopper investors include Brookfield Asset Management