Travel remains a top-spending category for US consumers. By providing an exceptional in-house booking experience where customers can spend their credit card points, banks are building loyalty while also carving out additional travel spend for themselves.  

Capital One continues to ramp up its tech-driven and luxurious travel offerings.  

The bank just bought Velocity Black, an AI-powered digital concierge that provides experiences like Wimbledon tickets, ski safaris, or swimming with sperm whales. Its artificial intelligence-powered offering lets customers receive recommendations, book experiences, and snag travel upgrades through instant messaging.   

Velocity’s “deep service expertise and unique tech platform” complement Capital One’s existing services, according to the bank’s SVP of experiences, Matt Knise. The acquisition builds on Capital One’s recent investment in travel booking portal Hopper and its collaboration with dining-focused platform SevenRooms, and marks the bank’s further appeals to an affluent customer base historically dominated by rivals like Amex.  

Capturing the loyalty of wealthy clientele through top-of-the-line tech and exclusive experiences is in vogue, and other big FinServs have been beefing up their travel products through partnerships, acquisitions, and investments as well. 

Here’s a non-exhaustive rundown of recent moves: Amex invested in hotel booking company Selfbook, JPMorgan bought luxury travel agency Frosch, Citi is partnering with Booking.com and invested in car rental startup Kyte through its VC arm, and US Bancorp bought travel platform TravelBank.