IBS Software, a global leader of SaaS solutions to the travel and transportation industry, has chosen CarTrawler, a leading B2B technology provider of car rental solutions, to offer car hire & insurance services to IBS iFly Staff & Corporate customers.

This partnership will simplify and enhance the Whole of Trip (WoT) experience for iFly Staff & Corporate customers, in addition to expanding IBS Software's footprint in non-air ancillaries in the global travel industry. Currently, airline staff and corporate travel involves navigating multiple applications to book essential add-ons. IBS Software's partnership with CarTrawler enables iFly Staff users to book car rentals and car insurance through an integrated and seamless staff travel system.

Since its inception in 2004, CarTrawler has provided more than 75 airlines with global car rental and mobility solutions for commercial purposes. CarTrawler also holds the widest breadth of car rental supply of any provider across over 1,700 suppliers in 55,000 locations. Its partnership with IBS Software signals an unprecedented and strategic step to offer an integrated travel experience for airline staff within corporate travel.

Madhu Nair, Head of iFly Staff Product Management and Strategy at IBS Software, says: "We're delighted to partner with CarTrawler, a renowned and well-respected global car rental solutions provider. Motivated by a need to improve, simplify and boost efficiency across the end-to-end travel experience for our iFly Staff and Corporate customers alike, we're working closely with CarTrawler to provide a unique and innovative Whole of Trip travel experience."

Aileen McCormack, Chief Commercial Officer at CarTrawler, says: "We're excited to partner with IBS Software and to support them in the expansion of their Staff Travel & Corporate solution for current and prospective customers, using CarTrawler's technology to seamlessly improve travel experiences through flexible and simple end-to-end bookings."

CarTrawler is the leading global B2B provider of car rental and mobility solutions to the travel industry. Our purpose is to drive successful partnerships. CarTrawler's end-to-end technology platform expands their airline and travel partners' offering to their customers, creating substantial ancillary revenue opportunities. The company provides unrivalled breadth and depth of content worldwide, including car rental, private airport transfer and ride-hailing services. CarTrawler creates innovative, data-led solutions for some of the largest travel brands in the world, including United Airlines, easyJet, American Express Travel, Emirates, and Uber. As a B2B company they focus solely on helping our airline and travel partners build their brands, not just their own.

IBS Software is a leading SaaS solutions provider to the travel industry globally, managing mission-critical operations for customers in the aviation, tour & cruise and hospitality industries. IBS Software's solutions for the aviation industry cover fleet & crew operations, aircraft maintenance, passenger services, loyalty programs, staff travel and air cargo management. IBS Software also runs a real-time B2B and B2C distribution platform providing hotel room inventory, rates and availability to a global network of hospitality companies and channels. For the tour and cruise industry, IBS provides a comprehensive, customer-centric, digital platform that covers onshore, online and on-board solutions. The Consulting and Digital Transformation (CDx) business focuses on driving digital transformation initiatives of its customers, leveraging its domain knowledge, digital technologies and engineering excellence. IBS Software is a Blackstone portfolio company and operates from 15 offices across the world.

Wego has emerged as the #1 travel app for flight search and booking in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region with a year-over-year (YOY) growth of over 157.7% and 143,002 downloads in February 2023, according to data from data.ai.

This data was gathered by analyzing the download rates of 1,062 travel apps that offer flight and hotel search capabilities. Wego has also earned the distinction of being the most downloaded travel app for flight-focused brands in the MENA region, and secondly, it is the most downloaded travel app under Meta and OTA categories in Kuwait since September 2022. With holidays such as Eid Fitr approaching soon, the app's popularity is expected to rise steadily.

Wego is an award-winning travel app and one of the largest online travel marketplaces in the MENA & Asia Pacific. With its extensive network of airline and hotel partners, Wego offers travelers a comprehensive range of travel options, allowing them to find the best deals and make informed decisions about their travel plans.

Whether traveling for adventure, work, family, or other reasons, users can rely on Wego to provide them with a seamless booking experience.

Wego's success can be attributed to its user-friendly interface, which allows users to browse and compare flight and hotel room options from multiple airlines and hotels in one place.

Moreover, throughout the year 2022, Wego has introduced a string of new updates and features for its users, like easier payment gateways with its collaboration with Tabby and Apple Pay. This, coupled with the app's competitive pricing, has helped Wego secure its position as the top travel app for flight search and booking in the MENA region.

About Wego

Wego provides award-winning travel search websites and top-ranked mobile apps for travelers living in the Asia Pacific and the Middle East regions. Wego harnesses powerful yet simple to use technology that automates the process of searching and comparing results from hundreds of airlines, hotels, and online travel agency websites.

Wego presents an unbiased comparison of all travel products and prices offered in the marketplace by merchants, both local and global, and enables shoppers to quickly find the best deal and place to book whether it is from an airline or hotel directly or with a third-party aggregator website.

Wego was founded in 2005 and is headquartered in Dubai and Singapore with regional operations in Bangalore، Jakarta and Cairo.

To complement its core business, supported by its extensive experience in the renewables sector, the Nordex Group has begun early initiatives in the green hydrogen market.

The Group has recently entered into two strategic joint ventures: one for the manufacturing of electrolyzers, a key component in the production of green hydrogen, and the second for developing large green hydrogen assets. Experts expect demand for hydrogen to grow exponentially by around 700 percent over the next thirty years. To achieve the target of net zero by 2050, it is required that the majority of this be achieved by clean sources.

José Luis Blanco, CEO of the Nordex Group, explains the rationale behind the company’s hydrogen activities: “With two joint ventures, the Nordex Group is establishing a presence in the hydrogen value chain, while, in parallel, continuing the company’s strategy of focusing on a low risk profile.”

Joint venture with Acciona: Developing green hydrogen projects

The joint venture with Acciona, Nordex H2 S.L, will develop green hydrogen projects in areas with abundant onshore wind resources. These resources are located in areas that are not connected to conventional power grids, and where green hydrogen can also be produced at a competitive cost. Bolstered by the company’s previous project development expertise in wind, the Nordex Group has built an attractive pipeline of green hydrogen projects throughout interesting geographies, for example, in the United States and Latin America.

ACCIONA has bought a 50 percent stake in this new Nordex Group venture for EUR 68 million – equally shared between ACCIONA S.A. and ACCIONA Energía – to fund the further development and expansion of the business.

With a target renewable energy development pipeline of 50 GW, the joint venture’s goal is to develop projects that will produce 0.5 million tons of green hydrogen annually within the next ten years. The first projects would be ready-to-build by 2027.

Each of the projects, whose minimum size will be 1 GW of installed renewable power, will be deployed through strategic agreements with other public and private companies and institutions interested in the production or mass consumption of green hydrogen.

“We are very happy to now accelerate these achievements together with Acciona, a strong partner with extensive expertise in large infrastructure projects,” says José Luis Blanco, CEO of the Nordex Group. “This joint venture reinforces our shared commitment to a decisive contribution towards the decarbonization of the world’s economy.”

Joint venture with Sodena: Developing electrolyzers for green hydrogen production

The second initiative, “Nordex Electrolyzers”, aims to develop, manufacture and market electrolyzers using proprietary technology. Both the Nordex Group and Sodena, a public company of the Government of Navarra, will allocate EUR 15 million to this initiative over the next five years to promote the development of a commercial prototype and its first industrial deployment. Experts expect demand for electrolyzers to grow from a very marginal capacity base today to 400 GW by 2030.

The Nordex Group – a profile

The Group has installed around 44 GW of wind energy capacity in over 40 markets and generated revenues of EUR 5.7 billion in 2022. The Company currently employs a workforce of approx. 9,100. The joint manufacturing capacity includes factories in Germany, Spain, Brazil, the United States, India, and Mexico. The product portfolio is focused on onshore turbines in the 4 to 6.X MW class, which are tailor-made for the market requirements of countries with limited space and regions with limited grid capacity.

Xapo Bank, a leading Bitcoin custodian and licensed private bank, has partnered with Lightspark and integrated with the Lightning Network to enable lightning-fast Bitcoin payments for its customers. Xapo Bank members can now instantly pay for small purchases of up to $100 USD at any vendor which accepts Lightning payments without suffering high transaction fees and long blockchain confirmation waiting times.

The Lightning Network enables scalable payments at millions of transactions per second across the network. This integration will reduce the time-consuming and costly experiences that often plague users who pay for small transactions in Bitcoin. Xapo Bank will be the first fully licensed private bank to offer near-instant Bitcoin payments, and its goal is to be the largest Lightning node, expanding the network's use across a host of new users.

Seamus Rocca, CEO of Xapo Bank, said: "The average transaction confirmation time of one hour combined with potentially large fees during periods of high usage make the Bitcoin network unsuitable for small daily payments such as groceries. By integrating with the hyper-efficient Lightning Network, we are the first bank in the world to streamline this process and allow our members to pay for small purchases with Bitcoin without having to convert to USD first.

"Against a backdrop of hyperinflation, economic uncertainty and political turmoil, we are entering a world where digital money is ubiquitous, and we need integrations like this that open up access to Bitcoin payments. We are bringing together the benefits of fast, cost-efficient, and global Bitcoin payments with the security, privacy, and flexibility unmatched in the traditional banking industry."

Founded in 2013, Xapo was the first institutional holder of Bitcoin and is one of the most trusted custodians in the industry, providing users with a secure platform to store and transact with their Bitcoin. It was the first crypto company in the world to obtain a banking licence, evolving into Xapo Bank, and has since expanded its offerings to include interest-bearing accounts for both USD and BTC and continues to develop its Wealth Management offering alongside other traditional banking services. Unlike other financial services businesses, members at Xapo Bank own and control their Bitcoin fully, meaning they can receive, hold and send it directly.

David Marcus, CEO and Co-Founder of Lightspark, said: "We're thrilled to enable the first bank on the Lightning Network to offer instant, cheap Bitcoin payments to its customers. Xapo has been one of our early closed beta partners, and we're delighted they chose Lightspark's enterprise-grade solution to reliably send and receive payments on the Lightning Network without all the complexity and operational overhead that typically comes with running a node on it. We look forward to talking more about our solution in the months to come."

To pay via the Lightning Network, Xapo Bank members will need to hold Bitcoin in the Xapo Bank App. After that, they can simply scan and pay an invoice at any merchant accepting Lightning Network payments. The network charges a small fee for each transaction, usually a few Satoshis. Xapo Bank has set a fixed payment fee for SAT 15 (less than $0.01 USD as of Feb 24th) to protect members from executing transactions with high fees.

Wences Casares, Chairman at Xapo Bank, said: "We believe that Bitcoin is the future of money, and we are committed to helping our members navigate this new financial landscape. By expanding our services to include instant Bitcoin transfers, we can offer our members better usability and ultimately grow the cryptocurrency that many of our members rely on."