Discovery Vitality has made significant changes to its travel portal, which includes deals with new partners – but which also forces all members who want to book flight, car, and hotel deals to sign up as Discovery Bank clients, whether they want to or not.

According to a report by Business Insider, Discovery's new travel portal has set the business up as an online travel agency.

And with this have come many new benefits – like more domestic airline partners, and the ability to use Active Rewards points to pay for flights.

According to Discovery Vitality CEO Dinesh Govender, the redesign was prompted by Comair's liquidation in June this year.

Their solution was to use the Vitality Travel platform housed within Discovery Bank, which Govender said they chose ‘due to its modern payment architecture, improved security, and a much simpler end-to-end travel booking and payment process for clients’.

One significant consequence of this move is that Vitality members who initially joined the rewards programme via Discovery Health now have no choice but to sign up as Discovery Bank clients and use a Discovery Bank card to pay for all transactions.

Discovery no longer allows alternate payment methods or third-party banks or apps.

Full Business Insider report