PassportCard, Israel’s largest travel and relocation insurance company, announced an expansion of its PassportCard PAY service that will let customers pay for flights, hotels, car rentals and attractions, the biggest expense categories in overseas trips. The company says the change can save up to 10% on these purchases and cut thousands of shekels from an average family vacation by using its red card, which is already held by 2 million Israelis.
The expansion was unveiled at a conference held Monday night at the Tel Aviv Performing Arts Center, attended by more than 2,000 insurance agents, including Israel Insurance Agents Association president Moshik Ben Porat, PassportCard founder and president Alon Katz, and the group’s management. Until now, PassportCard PAY could be used only while abroad, but customers can now pay in Israel during trip planning and avoid hidden and double fees on foreign-currency bookings.
PassportCard said the savings apply to bookings made through sites that charge in foreign currency, not sites that convert the final payment into shekels. The rollout will begin with PassportCard PAY customers and later expand to all clients. The company also highlighted PassportCard Tax Free, its recent digital VAT-refund service, saying Israelis leave about 1.3 billion shekels a year abroad by failing to claim refunds they are owed.
At the same conference, PassportCard announced a new insurance product called PLAN B, which will cover trip cancellation for any reason under the insured’s responsibility, including family events, unexpected schedule changes, or simply not wanting to travel. Katz said the move is a consumer benefit that will save the public hundreds of millions of shekels, and that more than 200,000 customers joined PassportCard PAY in the past year and used the card for hundreds of millions of dollars in spending.
