Hopper Inc. became one of Canada’s largest private technology companies by selling its online travel products and services to credit-card issuers and airlines globally.
Now it has landed one of its biggest-ever deals right in its own backyard.
Hopper will announce Monday it has signed a long-term deal to power the travel rewards program for Royal Bank of Canada RY-T, including its Avion Visa cardholders, a relationship that should translate into revenues in the mid-eight figures a year for the Montreal tech company. Hopper displaced RBC’s previous online travel partner, Expedia Group Inc. EXPE-Q, to win the deal.
RBC is the first Canadian bank to sign with Hopper, joining 12 global financial institutions that have struck similar deals since 2021, including Capital One Financial Corp. COF-N in the United States, Lloyds Banking Group LYG-N in Britain, Brazil-based Nubank NU-N, Australia’s Commonwealth Bank and Sumitomo Mitsui SMFG-N of Japan.
“It’s of huge strategic importance,” Hopper president Dakota Smith said in an interview. “I’ve had that question before: ‘You’re a Canadian company, if your technology is so good, why aren’t the banks in Canada using it?’ I love being able to say, ‘Well, they are.’”
Hopper leans into AI with virtual customer service agent it says is as good as humans
The deal provides more than bragging rights to a Canadian upstart. RBC sees deployment of Hopper – to which it has exclusive rights among large Canadian banks in its home market – as a competitive advantage as it attempts to increase its Rewards program member base by 40 per cent, to 14 million members by 2029.
RBC cardholders will use Hopper’s technology to book flights, accommodations, car rentals and packages using their reward points. RBC will also offer Avion clients Hopper’s suite of innovative insurance-like financial technology, or fintech, products for travellers, including the ability to rebook a flight to accommodate a delay or cancellation, or to buy the right to cancel a flight for a full refund for any reason.
“We wanted to be thoughtful about the technology we were going to put forward on our platform and focus on a provider that could really drive some innovation” and provide more options for Avion members, Vinita Savani, RBC’s executive vice-president, cards and loyalty, said in an interview.
Partnering with Hopper gives RBC a “material, differentiated advantage” that will drive market-share growth. “The reach they have with their inventory across hotels, car rentals, activities and packages helps us meet those travel needs, even though travel needs have evolved significantly given the macroeconomic environment,” she said.
The companies are announcing the partnership as economic uncertainty and geopolitical turmoil continue to hit the travel market.
2021: Hopper poised to soar on partnership deal with Capital One, $170-million in growth equity
Hopper first made its mark in the 2010s by predicting the best times for people to book flights on its mobile app, even advising them to wait for prices to drop. Its prediction tool was built using machine learning, drawing on vast data sets of past price quotes from travel booking systems.
As millions of consumers signed up to book trips, Hopper mined additional data sets to develop the fintech products. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 led to widespread cancellations. Hopper pulled through and pivoted to begin powering travel-booking services for card issuers, airlines and hotels to capitalize on demand for its fintech offerings. Hopper landed its first such deal in 2021 with Capital One, which also became an investor.
Hopper has now signed on 12 financial institutions, 17 airlines – including Air Canada and Flair, which offer the company’s fintech products on their online ordering portals – and other travel vendors. Mr. Smith predicted Hopper would have 100 corporate customers by year’s end.
The business-to-business unit now accounts for 90 per cent of Hopper’s more than US$500-million in annual revenue, dwarfing the contribution of the consumer app, which has about five million monthly users and serves as a testing ground for new products.
Hopper and Capital One also recently changed their business relationship. Earlier this month, Hopper said Capital One was bringing the travel portal in-house, transferring in dozens of its employees, paying Hopper a fee and taking on management of travel bookings itself. Capital One will continue to use Hopper’s software tools to help run its travel services, including the fintech offerings.
Mr. Smith said the change was a “net positive” and more cost-efficient for Hopper as it no longer needs a large internal team to manage its partner’s platform. He said Hopper expects revenue from the revised Capital One partnership to increase this year over 2025.
Hopper has been on a drive to cut costs and become profitable. It has laid off staff (Hopper now has 400 employees) and leaned heavily into artificial intelligence, using agentic tools to make its operations more efficient.
It also recently launched a generative-AI-powered virtual customer-service portal that Hopper claims can resolve customer issues four times faster than human agents while matching them for customer-satisfaction scores and cutting per-call costs. Hopper has also reduced online marketing spending for its consumer app. The changes enabled it to reach operating profitability in the second half of 2025, Mr. Smith said.
Editor’s note: Royal Bank of Canada's investor day target last year was to increase its base of Avion Rewards members, not Avion Rewards Visa cardholders, by 40 per cent, to 14 million. In addition, all RBC cardholders and Avion members will be able to use Hopper technology to book flights. This article was also updated to clarify that Avion clients will be able to rebook a flight if needed due to a delay or cancellation.