17 Travel Tech Acquisitions So Far This Year – See the List

Small deals are leading unprecedented M&A activity in travel tech right now, and you'll see that they dominate the list below. As we recently reported, private equity firms have accumulated an estimated $3 trillion that they need to deploy, and roughly $300 billion of that is earmarked for tech. Investment bank AGC Partners says these PE-backed players are going on a “feeding frenzy” to acquire smaller companies and consolidate their respective markets.

One area where larger deals are emerging is in travel payments. There have been two such deals in payment tech in recent weeks: Shift4 plans to purchase Global Blue for $2.5 billion, and Flywire just bought Sertifi for $330 million. 

Paired with two other big deals in the past couple of years, there seems to be a pattern emerging. Amadeus last year acquired Voxel for $123.2 million. And Sabre acquired Conferma Pay in 2022 for $72.5 million. 

All of these companies are trying to get ahead of a big shift in travel toward modern payment systems, as the industry races to catch up with retail. A survey by Amadeus in 2023 found that ease of payment is the top tech issue for travelers over the next 10 years.

Overall, there have been at least 17 acquisitions in travel tech announced since the start of 2025. Here is the breakdown. 

Shift4, a payments and ecommerce tech company, plans to acquire Global Blue for $2.5 billion. 

Shift4 provides payments tech to industries including airlines, hotels, food and beverage, and more. 

Global Blue specializes in tax-free shopping and payment tech, connecting retail and hospitality businesses with international travelers. 

Shoppers can claim value-added tax (VAT) refunds through the Global Blue platform, and the tech enables them to pay for goods in their own currency. The company’s tech is u