The plan by blockchain company Blockskye to reinvent corporate travel processes is underway at PwC, according to sources. The accounting giant, with plenty of interest in blockchain technology for its own services, was not named in earlier coverage. Its participation has been one of the industry’s worst-kept secrets.
PwC moved its travel management business in the United States last year from American Express Global Business Travel to Kayak BTX. That’s the brand for Blockskye’s collaboration with the Booking Holdings metasearch company, which provides a front end to supplier-direct connections. In November, co-founder and co-CEO Brook Armstrong said Blockskye was handling 2,200 transactions per day and expected that to triple by the end of this year.
Blockskye disrupts travel distribution, booking, payment and settlement by bypassing, on some transactions, intermediaries including global distribution systems and credit cards. It supports seamless omnichannel sales and servicing enabled by a “cryptographic audit log.”
Its agents use Amadeus. Gant Travel supports Blockskye with back office services.
Armstrong in November said the new approach would reduce payment and reconciliation processes by 4 percent. “When you make travelers and suppliers happy, and clean up the rest of the spaghetti, I see no reason why we can’t all double that,” he wrote on LinkedIn.
Around the industry, blockchain tech has been tried with “smart” hotel contracts, hotel commission processing and, at PwC rival EY, airline contracts.
The Big Four accounting firms, including Deloitte and KPMG, are all big blockchain proponents. In a report published this year, PwC projected blockchain’s global economic impact in 2030 at $1.76 trillion, including $407 billion in the United States. “We believe there are six key advantages to using blockchain: transparency, traceability, safety, trust, efficiency and privacy,” according to the report. “Blockchain is starting to revolutionize the ways our society has interactions and transactions.”
Enkronos editor Gianluca Busato last summer delved into each of the quartet’s business interests in the area, suggesting that “PwC is more prominent in the field of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology with its data collection and reporting.”
In March 2023, PwC’s Governance Insights Center wrote that blockchain use cases continued to “multiply” and that the tech was “becoming essential” to operations across many sectors. “PwC economists see continuing potential for blockchain to create value in nearly every industry — including healthcare, government, manufacturing, finance and retail — and expect the majority of businesses to be using the technology in some form by 2025,” according to the post.
Deloitte for this year identified “decentralized architectures and ecosystems” as a top tech trend. “ The growing awareness of the potential offered by this technology is related to the understanding of its role in the process of increasing credibility, bringing invaluable benefits to every company,” according to the firm’s report. ”This process concerns, among others, the use of blockchain in applications, business models, IT architecture, systems, supply chains and cybersecurity.”
A media relations contact at PwC could not be reached by press time.
