travel-payments
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Walid Mah'd
Walid Mah'd is the co-founder and CEO of Moreta (YC S24), a San Francisco fintech that lets international travelers pay with local QR networks in Asia without a bank account in every country. A former Mastercard Advisors payments consultant and Ivey Business School graduate, he built the company after feeling the friction of paying while backpacking across Southeast and East Asia.
ConnexPay
ConnexPay is a Plano, Texas payments-technology company that unifies the two traditionally separate halves of the payment process - accepting customer payments (PayIns) and issuing supplier payments via virtual cards (PayOuts) - into one platform, one contract and one reconciliation. Founded in 2017 by former U.S. Bank payments executive Bob Kaufman, it lets travel agencies, marketplaces, insurers and other 'high-risk' merchants use incoming card revenue to instantly fund outbound supplier payments, removing the need for pre-funded accounts and reducing risk while capturing card rebates.
WeTravel
WeTravel is a fintech and SaaS platform built specifically for multi-day, group and tour travel businesses. It lets operators create branded booking pages, collect deposits and staged installment payments in multiple currencies, manage traveler details, pay suppliers, and build AI-assisted itineraries - all from one dashboard. Founded in 2016 by three immigrant entrepreneurs who met at UC Berkeley, the company has processed trips in 206 countries for more than 1.6 million travelers and raised $126M in total funding, including a $92M Series C led by Sapphire Ventures in September 2025.
Ted Clements
Ted Clements is the CEO of WeTravel, a San Francisco-based payments and booking platform for multi-day and group travel operators. He took the top job in January 2023 after co-founder Johannes Koeppel stepped aside to become Chief Product Officer and personally recruited him. Clements built his career at FareHarbor, joining as one of the first mainland US sales reps and rising to COO and acting CEO, helping scale the day-tour software company to 700-plus employees and an acquisition by Booking Holdings. In September 2025 he led WeTravel through a $92 million Series C round from Sapphire Ventures, pushing the company toward its goal of becoming the operating system for the fragmented multi-day travel market.
TravelJoy
TravelJoy is an all-in-one software platform for travel advisors and agencies, bundling a CRM, itinerary builder, branded proposals, automations, and secure payments into one workspace. Founded in 2018 by Dayo Esho and Chris Kline, the San Francisco company helps independent travel entrepreneurs run their businesses and compete with DIY booking sites - and now facilitates more than $1 billion in annual customer spend.