When Flight Delays Became an Opportunity: The Birth of Swiipr

Meanwhile, Ian Clowes, a fintech veteran, had spent decades in banking and payments—helping found the UK's first cloud-based neobank, digital payment solutions, and navigating regulation and large systems.

In 2019, they formally launched Swiipr Technologies Ltd (registered June 24, 2019) in London, UK.

They aim to reinvent the payment and compensation model for airlines — transforming manual, slow, and opaque workflows into digital, real-time, and user-friendly processes.

Founders & Roles: A Complementary Pair

Tara Spielhagen – Co-Founder & CEO

Tara is described as a "change-maker and visionary, deeply passionate about disruptive technologies and user experiences with extensive management experience in fintech, travel and mobile." Her background is international; she holds an MA from Oxford and speaks five languages. Having personally experienced travel disruption and navigating its aftermath, she brought the traveller's voice into product design.

Ian Clowes – Co-Founder & Chairman

Ian brings institutional credibility and payments ecosystem credibility. His bio describes him as a "serial fintech entrepreneur, founder, CEO, board member and senior banker … created the UK's first cloud-based neobank and travel industry's first digital payment card." With his experience in payments platforms (PCT, Omnio Group, etc) and his MBA from Warwick, Ian adds structural, scale and regulatory discipline.

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Together, Tara and Ian offer a fresh, user-centric approach to travel experience thinking (Tara) and deep payments/infrastructure acumen (Ian). That mix proved decisive in a domain where both traveller empathy and regulatory/operational rigour matter.

The Problem They Chose: Disruption Payouts & Travel Friction

Airline disruptions—delays, cancellations, and lost luggage—impact hundreds of millions of passengers each year. Yet most payout systems remain slow, manual, voucher-based, with limited flexibility for passengers or airlines.

Key pain-points they addressed:

• Long wait times for compensation or entitlements.
• Paper vouchers or bank transfers that couldn't be used immediately in a retail or airport environment.
• High fraud and inefficient processing costs for airlines.
• Lack of data integration with airline CRM and operations to automate and track claims.

They saw the gap clearly: build a platform that issues both virtual and physical prepaid cards, integrates with airline systems, allows instant payout and alternative forms of compensation (meals, vouchers, expenses) and serves both passenger and staff/crew payments.

Building the Solution: From Idea to Platform

The initial concept took shape around 2020-2021. Swiipr's platform now supports virtual and physical compensation cards, a mobile app, integration with airline systems, and functionality for crew/operational payments beyond passenger compensation.

Its products include:

• Swiipr Compensation Card: Folio for passengers whose flights are cancelled or disrupted—funds issued quickly, usable globally at retail.
• Swiipr Welfare Card: Designed for immediate spending needs, e.g., meals or accommodations during delays.
• Staff/crew payments: Enables airlines to issue instant payments to crew or staff during operational disruptions, trips, and other events.
  

In a little over a year, the company gained traction: by May 2024, Swiipr announced a Series A funding of £6 million, led by Octopus Ventures, with participation from TX Ventures and Solano Partners. At that point, they had already claimed usage in 26 airlines across 70 countries, with evidence of one primary flag carrier using the platform in 167 airports.

Scaling, Challenges & Growth

Growth & Market Fit

Swiipr is positioned at the intersection of travel-tech and fintech—two fast-evolving sectors. The large addressable market (500 million+ disrupted passengers annually) and regulatory pressure on airlines (regarding compensation rights and customer experience) created a strong pull.

Their traction is early but credible. The funding in 2024 is a validation of both product-market fit and investor confidence. Their focus on R&D, AI, and data analytics signals ambition beyond simple payout rails.

Major Challenges

• Operational complexity: Airlines are large, regulated, and slow to adopt new tech; integrating into their CRM/operations and global payout systems takes time.
• Global payments & compliance: Issuing cards, ensuring they work across jurisdictions, handling FX, and managing regulation and fraud are significant hurdles.
• Business model and scale: While the addressable market is large, converting airline procurement cycles and proving ROI (cost reduction, fraud prevention) requires evidence and patience.
• User adoption & trust: Travellers must trust the payout system; shifting from vouchers or bank transfers to a new ecosystem demands usability, clarity, and security.

Ian later noted in investor materials the importance of "payments discipline and regulatory readiness," while Tara emphasised "user experience and traveller pain-points" being central to product design.

The Founders' Philosophy & Why This Story Matters

Tara and Ian embody a blend of empathy and infrastructure mindset. Tara brings the traveller's perspective—a desire to fix what is broken in the passenger journey. Ian brings decades of experience in building payment rails and scaling fintech platforms. Together, they show that you need both a customer-centric story and operational muscle to reinvent an industry.

Their story matters because:

• They target a significant, often overlooked pain point in travel: compensation and disruption payments.
• They combine a vertical-specific domain (airlines + travel) with payments tech; this focus gives them an edge.
• They scale infrastructure not just for passengers but also for staff/crew and operational payments, making their solution multi-dimensional.
• They show how fintech is not only about consumer banks, but also about operational efficiency, B2B2C platforms, and new rails for industries.

Tara's comment at the investment round rang true: "Legacy compensation systems are unfit for purpose… We are proud to have developed a new solution that solves many pain points."

What's Next: Roadmap & Vision

Looking ahead, key aims for Swiipr include:

• Expanded airline partnerships globally, deeper deployment across airports and carriers.
• Product innovation: more dynamic compensation offerings, data analytics for airlines, crew/crew-expense modules, and AI-powered fraud/delay prediction.
• Geographic scale: While headquartered in the UK, they will expand their reach across airlines in APAC, the Middle East, and the Americas.
• Operational efficiency: Enabling airlines to cut payout processing costs by up to 60 % (a figure cited in the media).
• Category expansion: Beyond passengers, perhaps transport disruptions, rail, cruise, or broader "disruption payments" across industries.

In essence, Tara and Ian aren't just building a payments platform—they're modernising how industries handle disruption, compensation and customer care.