Upway · Investor Deck01 / 14
upway

Wealth management for the points you forgot you had.

The holder-side intelligence layer for loyalty points. See what you own, protect it from devaluation, and make the highest-value move before it evaporates.

The loyalty asset class$215B → $400B
Outstanding loyalty-point value; industry estimates.
The insight02 / 14

Loyalty became finance. The holder never got a manager.

Airlines already borrow against their loyalty ledgers. Co-brand cards are the profit engine. The most valuable asset in the system is the points ledger, yet the holder still sees scattered balances and stale portals.

Asset class today~$215B
Trajectory→ ~$400B
Americans flying blind40M+
Asset-class figures are industry estimates; holder count is an Upway estimate.
Loyalty became finance · 2020-21 collateral valuations
A points program worth ~2× the airline.
UAUnited MileagePlus loyalty program, pledged as collateral
$21.9B
UAUnited Airlines the entire company · market cap
~$11B
$0$30B
~2×: the loyalty program alone was worth about twice the airline that runs it.
And it's not just United:Delta SkyMiles ~$26BAmerican AAdvantage $18-30B
United Airlines SEC 8-K, 12 June 2020; American & Delta per airline financing disclosures & appraisals, 2020-21.
The problem03 / 14

Maddie, 28 · ~$5,000 in points, and she still pays cash to fly.

A real user, not a persona. Which program to transfer to? Where's the availability? Which cabin is worth it? Nothing she used could tell her, so most weeks she gave up and paid cash. She's the median holder, drowning in an asset she can't price, protect, or use:

Real user · balances as connected
Bilt100,000
Chase UR80,000
Qantas144,000
Est. best-use~$5,069
Scattered

A dozen accounts, no single view

Cards, airline miles, hotel points, partner balances, statuses, and credits, all in separate logins.

Illegible

A balance is not a value

The same points can be worthless or worth thousands, and no tool tells you which.

Depreciating

It silently loses value

Programs devalue without notice; expirations and closing transfer windows all move against the holder.

Unactionable

Every tool solves one piece

Trackers show a number. Search tools find one flight. Nobody manages all of it.

Her 80,000 Chase points = $800 cashed out or ~$2,400 of flights she'd have paid cash for.

Maddie owns the currency, but nothing she uses can tell her which one she's holding.
Why now04 / 14

Two forces just crossed and opened a category.

Force 01 · Loyalty as finance

Points now move like financial assets

Airlines borrow against them; issuers depend on them; program rules change faster than holders can track.

MileagePlus pledged · 2020$21.9B
Force 02 · AI-readable accounts

Models can finally parse hostile data

Account pages, inbox confirmations, transfer rules, and award charts are now machine-readable enough to manage.

Accounts machine-readable2023 →
The forces cross2026
NOW · 2026 2020 · $21.9B pledged 2023 · models read accounts the category opens Loyalty as finance AI can read accounts 2015 2020 2023 2026
Product05 / 14

One live statement for everything you hold.

ConnectEvery accountcards · airlines · hotels · inbox
SeeReal valuebest-use dollars, not balances
ProtectFrom decaydevaluations & expiries, early
ActBest movethe highest-value redemption

One connection turns scattered balances into a live, real-dollar position. A balance is not a value; Upway shows the difference.

Guided one-tap execution ships next.

Found above cash-out+$2,999
Maddie's portfolio · from slide 03 · illustrative values
Upway · Portfolio statementLive
Estimated best-use value
$5,069
Upway found +$2,999 above cash-out value.
CU
Chase Ultimate Rewards80,000 pts · transferable
$2,400$800 cash-out
BR
Bilt Rewards100,000 pts · Hyatt / Aeroplan
$1,500$550 cash-out
QF
Qantas Frequent Flyer144,000 pts · illustrative devalues ~Aug
$1,169$720 cash-out
Recommended move → Use Chase via Hyatt before cashing out; move Qantas before the next award-chart change.
Why it's defensible06 / 14

The feed is a commodity. The reasoning engine is the company.

Moat 01 · Connectivity

We read accounts the programs keep messy on purpose

Holder-authorized access across programs built not to be portable. The hard, durable problem.

Moat 02 · Vantage

The only view of the whole position

Connected to everything you hold, Upway sees value, risk, and movement no single airline or issuer can.

Moat 03 · Compounding

Every move teaches the engine

Each valuation, alert, and executed redemption feeds back in. The advice sharpens with every holder.

The dependency answer
Open data, closed brain.
Swap the underlying availability feed in weeks. What you can't swap is the engine that turns raw availability into "40K points → Hawaii, business, save $2,300" for someone who doesn't know what a transfer partner is. We open-source the community data; the brain stays proprietary.
Market07 / 14

Sized from the holder up, not 1% of a big number.

The estimated $215B→$400B asset class is the backdrop. 40M+ Americans and millions of Australians hold points they can't price or use; the serviceable wedge is the ~2M premium-card holders across AU + US whose points Upway can actively manage.

Holders
~2M
AU + US premium-card & frequent-travel holders with fragmented points.
×
Value managed
~$3K
Points, miles, certificates & credits managed per active holder.
×
Take
~2%
Subscription + booking commissions + card kickbacks + exchange spread.
=
Serviceable ARR
~$120M
The consumer wedge, before the B2B expansion.
all inputs Upway estimates · to validate
~2M holders  ×  ~$3K managed  ×  ~2% take  =  ~$120M
Take blends ~$5/mo Pro subscription + booking commissions + card kickbacks + eventual exchange spread; in validation.
Phase two · Upway for Business10× larger

Same engine, new holder: point Upway at startups and teams. Business-card points and team travel, an expansion, not a pivot.

Landscape08 / 14

Everyone optimizes one corner. The holder's whole position is open.

The open quadrant · nobody's here
Everyone else · one corner each The programs' own side Holder-side ↑ Supply-side ↓ ← One tool Whole position →
Mindtrip · Otto · Laylabook cash · read no points
AwardWalletshows the balance
MaxRewardswatches card perks
seats.aero · point.mefinds one flight
Issuer portalssell their own corner
Benji · Points.compoints exchange, firm to firm
Upwaymanages the whole position

General AI planners (Mindtrip, Otto, Layla) book cash trips and never read your points. Watchers show one balance; search finds one flight; the programs won't build against their own breakage. The holder's whole position stays open.

What's built09 / 14

Built, not slideware.

The full connect → value → book loop runs today at app.upway.travel.

The whole loop, live
39
chat tools live · adviser · wallet · search · trips · booking
01Connect every account
02See one real-dollar position
03Book the award flight, in chat
What's shipped

The core loop is real, not mocked:

Award + cash searchPortfolio valuationIn-chat bookingDevaluation alertsTransfer optimizer
Demand signal
100

on the early-access waitlist; investor demos in progress.

Business model10 / 14

Monetize trust, not confusion.

Three stacking engines that blend to the ~2% take.

Free · holder layer

See & protect

Portfolio view, valuation, risk flags, cash-booking paths. Genuinely useful. This is distribution and trust.

Bookingscommission per cash booking
Cardskickback per approved card referral
Pro · management layer

Manage & act

Proactive monitoring, deeper redemption tooling, richer alerts, guided action.

Pro~$5/mo subscription · in validation
Latera cut when we move value for you
Every engine stacks: Pro holders still book (commission) and still take the right-card recommendation (kickback). Three engines, one holder.
95% free · the moat
5% Pro

Free tier is the moat; Pro is the margin. Never gate the first "what are my points worth?" moment.

Team11 / 14

Founder-market fit: one founder ships the product, one owns the market.

KF

Kyle Fitzsimmons

Founder · product & engineering

Aviation-obsessed operator who built the Upway platform end-to-end.

RMIT Aviation · RPL pilot7 yrs building consumer & travel products
HF

Harry Fiske-Kealy

Co-founder · brand & commercial

Owns brand, creative, social, and commercial go-to-market. The audience and revenue motion.

Fuji Xerox · 8 yrs B2B salesToke Collective · founder
Vision · Open Source Travel12 / 14

What PayPal did for the checkout, Upway does for travel.

Nothing today connects your cards, banks, programs, and trips, and acts on all of it. The wedge is the points manager. The prize is the layer every travel dollar routes through.

01
Today · the wedge

The points manager

Every program, card & credit in one holder-controlled position. Live today.

02
Next · the travel OS

Every trip, one place

Plan, book, redeem, and manage with your people. Same engine for teams: Upway for Business.

03
Endgame

Open Source Travel

The open infrastructure of travel: data and rails open so everything builds on it, and every trip routes through.

Open · how it gets bigthe data · the rails · distribution
Closed · why it stays oursthe brain · the margin
The ask13 / 14

Raising to put a manager on the holder's side.

$2.5M
Seed · standard SAFE · 18-24 mo runway
Engineering25% · connectivity, agent tooling, reliability
Growth & distribution45% · first growth hire, channel tests, community
Ops & runway30% · legal, data feeds, 18-24 months of runway
Eng 25%Growth 45%Ops & runway 30%
Why AirTree: consumer + fintech thesis, ANZ-first GTM, a founder who lives inside the problem, and a wedge that opens onto the whole of travel.
Appendix · Q&A14 / 14

The sharp questions, answered.

Open vs closed

How "open" makes money

We open what commoditizes: community data, the rails, distribution. We keep what compounds: the engine and the holder graph. Open is how every travel dollar routes through; closed is why the margin stays ours.

Connectivity

How we read accounts

Program-by-program ingestion with graceful fallbacks; holder-authorized and resilient to portals that change.

Regulatory

Consent & data posture

Holder-authorized read access only; privacy-first handling; no moving value without an explicit holder instruction. The posture of an adviser, not a money transmitter.

Unit economics

Three engines, stacked

Free pays for itself via booking commissions and card kickbacks; Pro (~$5/mo) is pure margin; exchange spread compounds later.

Platform risk

If a feed cuts us off

Feeds are commodity inputs: seats.aero or AwardWallet swap out in weeks, and direct program relationships replace them at scale. The engine and the holder relationship stay ours.

Distribution

Where the first 10K holders come from

Dense and online: creators, Reddit, FlyerTalk, and the free "what are my points worth?" hook. Near-term, a loyalty MCP server puts Upway inside ChatGPT and Claude, the answer when someone asks "is this award worth it?"

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