Blockchain-based travel and expense management provider Blockskye has hired PwC's Danielle Cavnor—who collaborated with the company to develop its enterprise offering—to lead its sales efforts. Blockskye also is launching a payment platform through which travelers can pay for business travel with partners' consumer loyalty cards, the company announced.
PwC's Cavnor—who, alongside her colleague Eric Gray, was named BTN's Travel Manager of the Year in 2023 for her pioneering work with Blockskye and Kayak in developing what became the Kayak for Business Enterprise offering—now is Blockskye's VP of sales. Reporting to chief commercial officer Hank Benedetti, Cavnor will lead efforts toward what Blockskye co-founder and co-CEO Michael Share said would be "an explosive year of growth" for the company.
As of last fall, Kayak for Business Enterprise publicly had named two clients besides PwC U.S.—multinational alcoholic beverage company Diageo and TripAdvisor—and Blockskye co-CEO and co-founder Brook Armstrong said at last year's BTN Innovate conference that they were in discussions with a few more during the "innovation period" for the solution.
Gray, meanwhile, also has left PwC U.S., according to his LinkedIn profile, and is now global travel director for FTI Consulting.
Blockskye on Tuesday also announced its new B360 payment platform, set to launch later this year, which it said will be a "first-of-its-kind" offering through which travelers can pay with branded loyalty credit cards of partners while companies receive reporting and controls on those payments via captured data. "We will capture the data from consumer cards that are used for B360 and use blockchain technology to connect them with reporting, duty-of-care and other feeds that use spend data within a company's travel program," according to Benedetti.
That enables companies in essence to create "their own loyalty program, incentivizing travelers to earn the benefits of their preferred form of payment in exchange for selecting suppliers that align with their company's cost or sustainability goals," according to Blockskye.
United Airlines has an "agreement in principle" to be the launch supplier for the B360 platform, with travelers able to use personal United MileagePlus-branded cards to pay for business travel. Benedetti said more partners and more consumer cards would be enabled as the platform evolves.
The B360 platform is Blockskye's second foray into corporate payment platforms, following its BlockskyeMax platform, which automatically can charge expenses to companies without use of a credit card. That capability has been integrated into the Kayak for Business Enterprise platform.