Embedded Finance Review Podcast, episode 22. Published 1 April 2025. Guest: Eric-Jan Krausch, founder of 1-CP. Host: Lars Markull.
Lars Markull: Do you immediately know what GDS and OTA stand for? Chances are you have been working in the travel industry. For those of you who don't know, it's an industry with very complex payment structures. This is a massive opportunity for new embedded finance products, but likely only players who understand how the industry works can succeed.
In this episode I speak with Eric-Jan Krausch. Eric is the founder of 1-CP, a corporate payment solution. With 1-CP, but also with his prior business Amodio, Eric focuses on the travel industry, providing him unique insights. In this episode we speak about how payments work in the travel industry, why B2B is so much bigger than B2C, and what new trends are evolving in the industry.
My name is Lars Markull and this is the Embedded Finance Review Podcast. Every two weeks I'm interviewing the builders and shapers of embedded finance. And now let's dive in.
Welcome
Eric-Jan Krausch: Thank you very much for the invitation, happy to have a conversation today about travel and payments.
Lars Markull: Yeah, perfect. You mentioned already travel and payments. This is the world we're going to dive into in this podcast, looking at the different, yeah, let's call them embedded finance slash fintech slash financial service use cases in the travel industry. And when using the term travel industry, I mean, we spoke about this in the pre-chat as well, it's not that everybody and the listeners know everything about this industry and maybe exactly what it determines, or how it is defined. So maybe you can help us a little bit. When I or you say travel industry, what do you exactly mean?
What the travel industry actually is
Eric-Jan Krausch: I think travel always consists of the full value chain, right? So I think from the products that everybody knows, whether it's trains, flights, accommodation, it's also consisting of the services around it. It's also consisting of the suppliers that are needed to have those services to be used. But also it's using all of the distribution chain that is more towards the customer, like intermediaries, online travel agencies, web shops, but it could be also local stores. Still, there's still a lot of business happening on travel management companies, which are on the ground side. So I think for me, travel is actually everything around these topics, from the known suppliers, but also the supply and distribution network around it.