Payments

🇰🇪 A week late, an after-the-fact post on The Hotel Expo, and why distribution and payments will consolidate the link between East Africa and Europe. Written from the Coast, after six days of follow-ups. I was at THX in Nairobi on the opening keynote panel and presenting TTM on stage; what follows is the argument that survived the meetings afterwards. Nobody builds a Maasai Mara: you can’t manufacture the thing East Africa actually sells. And “welcome”, karibu, is a disposition: you cannot write it into a brand standard, and you notice it ten minutes after landing from Europe. ...

And how the infrastructure we’ve been building for 2.5 years might finally make it possible It’s December 2025, and AI agents are everywhere. ChatGPT plans your honeymoon to the Maldives. Claude designs a three-week backpacking itinerary through Japan. Perplexity finds you that off-the-beaten-path trattoria in Bologna. Then comes the moment of truth: “Book it.” And the magic collapses. Your agent stutters. It can’t actually check if that boutique ryokan has availability. It hallucinates a confirmation number. It sends you to Booking.com, which means starting the search all over again. Or worse: a Spanish influencer couple recently missed a flight because ChatGPT incorrectly advised them they didn’t need a visa for Puerto Rico, without mentioning the ESTA. The AI was confidently, dangerously wrong. ...

Programme context and Chain4Travel’s participation In late 2024, the European Central Bank (ECB) launched an innovation platform seeking “pioneers” and “visionaries” to collaborate on digital euro development. The programme aimed to demonstrate how conditional payments could be implemented technically, provide opportunities for participants to interact with simulated digital euro interfaces, and explore additional use cases for the digital currency. As part of their preparation phase for a potential digital euro launch, the ECB invited stakeholders including merchants, banks, payment service providers, fintech companies, and technical experts to participate in this groundbreaking initiative. ...