“Can a European OTA monetize the payment and credit flow around €2,000 holiday bookings as aggressively as it monetizes the booking itself?”
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.
Lastminute.com processes payments through Adyen, Checkout.com and Nuvei. Disclosed money-movement rails: Faster Payments.
Lastminute.com's cards are issued through Adyen Issuing.
Lastminute.com uses Adyen Issuing (multi-currency virtual cards) for FX and cross-border payouts.
The Embedded Finance Index 2026 maps 5 layers in Lastminute.com's stack: Payments / PSP (Adyen, Checkout.com and Nuvei); Money movement (Faster Payments); Card issuing (Adyen Issuing); Lending (Zilch Travel (white-label BNPL/payments), Zip BNPL at checkout (pay in 4) and BNPL for holiday packages (avg booking ~€2,000)); FX & payouts (Adyen Issuing (multi-currency virtual cards)).
Lastminute.com was founded by Martha Lane Fox, Brent Hoberman, Fabio Cannavale and Marco Corradino and is founded in 1998, headquartered in Chiasso, Switzerland.
Get a read on where your own stack stands against Lastminute.com and the rest of its category — what they built versus bought, which providers they use, and where the gaps in your own strategy and competitive set actually are.