Lastminute.com
“Can a European OTA monetize the payment and credit flow around €2,000 holiday bookings as aggressively as it monetizes the booking itself?”
Founded1998
HQChiasso, Switzerland
FoundersMartha Lane Fox, Brent Hoberman, Fabio Cannavale, Marco Corradino
Latest roundPublicly listed (SIX: LMN)
IndustryMarketplace / Travel
The story
Founded 1998 as a UK late-deals dot-com pioneer, sold to Sabre, then acquired in 2015 by the Italian/Swiss Bravofly Rumbo Group, which rebranded as Lastminute.com Group and shifted strategy toward Dynamic Holiday Packaging. The company has more recently positioned itself as a travel-tech platform and is actively building an embedded-finance layer — combining BNPL for high-ticket holiday bookings, a fintech white-label business (Zilch Travel), and Adyen-issued virtual cards to optimize supplier payouts across airlines and hotels.
Product timeline
1998
Founded in London by Martha Lane Fox and Brent Hoberman as a late-deals travel site.· pivot
2006
Bravofly Rumbo Group founded by Fabio Cannavale and Marco Corradino in Chiasso.· pivot
2015
Bravofly Rumbo Group acquires lastminute.com from Sabre and rebrands as Lastminute.com Group.· acquisition
2016
Acquires travel social network WAYN.· acquisition
2023
Appoints Checkout.com as global payments provider.· banking
2025
Launches Zilch Travel — first fully integrated fintech white label powered by lastminute.com.· lending
2026
Expands Adyen partnership with Adyen Issuing for Visa-branded virtual cards for supplier payouts.· card
Regulated entities
1
regulatory licence held by Lastminute.com
Licence types, jurisdictions and registered entities are in the Embedded Finance Index report.
The stack
4 layers disclosed in Lastminute.com’s embedded-finance stack
Payments / PSP
Card issuing
in the full report
Lending
in the full report
FX & payouts
in the full report
Accounting gap: none
5 more providers across 3 layers, with confidence-scored evidence and source URLs, are in the Embedded Finance Index report.