Thomas Cook partners with fintech firm for pay-per-day travel insurance

LONDON, Jan 17 (Reuters) - British travel company Thomas Cook has partnered with fintech firm Revolut to launch a "pay-per-day" travel insurance service which automatically provides users with medical cover by tracking their location through their mobile phones.

Revolut, the digital bank start-up, said it could pinpoint customers' location through its app technology and automatically turn on the coverage when required, starting at less than 1 pound ($1.38) a day.

"We wanted to create a type of insurance that uses technology to help our customers and only cover you on the days you actually needed to be covered," Revolut CEO Nikolay Storonsky said in a statement.

Revolut was founded in July 2015 and has grown quickly, with 1.2 million users globally and around 600,000 in Britain. It allows customers to exchange currencies at rates used by banks and pay by card in different countries without international fees. In December, it also launched cryptocurrency trading.

Thomas Cook Money, the new financial arm of Thomas Cook (Frankfurt: A0MR3W - news) , will partner Revolut to underwrite the insurance policies. ($1 = 0.7258 pounds) (Reporting by Alistair Smout; Editing by Adrian Croft)