Manx Entrepreneur Harvey Lowe wins Santander X Global Challenge
Are entrepreneurs born or made? For Harvey Lowe, 21, a winner of the Santander X Global Challenge – New era of Customer Experience Award, it’s probably a mixture of both. The co-founder of Arcube, a travel technology business, set up his first business in e-commerce at 15, selling it at 17. While studying Finance at the University of Manchester, Harvey was involved with a student-run venture capital fund for university startups where he met Prithveesh Reddy, a fellow teen entrepreneur. They identified a problem – how can airlines generate loyalty from infrequent travellers, when loyalty points just sit in people’s accounts, and they never earn enough to do anything meaningful with them?
While many students would have put their kernel of a business idea aside until after university, Harvey and Prithveesh doubled down, working on a technological solution they developed into Arcube, a data analysis platform that enables airlines to earn income from personalized passenger loyalty programmes.
When Harvey returned home to the Isle of Man for his summer holidays, he needed a place to work on his business. The launch of the Isle of Man Work Café in spring 2023, was fortuitous.
“The Work Café came at the perfect time for me.” Harvey explained. “I needed somewhere to work outside the house, with good wifi, and facilities, and the Work Café was ideal.”
At the time, Arcube was running a pilot programme for one major customer – Etihad Airways. Since then they have brought in over $1.5 million of venture capital (from Fuel Ventures, Oxford Capital, and other investors) and are now in talks with more than 60 airlines.
“The pilot programme with Etihad proved the concept, enhancing passenger satisfaction, increasing average customer spend by over 10% and boosting revenue by more than $1.6 million. We’re moving to a full-scale programme with Etihad and are in advanced conversations with 16 airlines. It takes a lot longer for major airlines to come on board, but we expect to get moving more quickly with some regional carriers.
“I still use the Work Café as my office whenever I’m in the Isle of Man, but it’s more than a free workspace. It’s a supportive environment where you meet other entrepreneurs across all sectors who are brilliant to bounce ideas around with. The Work Café has become an incubator of talent, and it has been invaluable being able to share problems and talk things through with people who understand challenges that are specific to the Isle of Man.”
In 2025, just a year after Harvey graduated, Arcube joined five startups as a winner of the Santander X Global Challenge - New era of Customer Experience Award. The challenge, which brought together companies from 11 countries, aimed to identify the most innovative solutions that enhance user experience, personalization, omnichannel, on-demand network quality, and anti-fraud security measures.
Harvey said: “Winning the award is great. It’s a specific award which covers exactly what we do as we are using personalisation and customer loyalty for our whole product. The award is a recognition of our technology and that it has real world applications. We made the four-minute pitch from a hotel lobby while we were in Singapore at an aviation festival. We just decided to go for it and see what happened. I was in Berlin when the award ceremony took place, so our graphic designer accepted the award in Barcelona on Arcube’s behalf.”
As well as prize money of EUR 10,000, Arcube will also get access to Santander X 100, a community of Santander X's most successful startups and scaleups, and Fintech Station, Banco Santander’s open innovation programme.
“We plan to use the prize money to continue scaling the team. We should soon be moving to eight team members, based in various locations. The prize funds will also be useful for helping us build the product integrations different airlines need as this can be expensive as it’s specific to each one.”
Arcube’s success in Santander’s global awards follows its progress in a Santander X UK competition where it was shortlisted in the university business category.
“I met Santander UK’s CEO (Mike Regnier) at an Isle of Man Work Café event, and he mentioned a Santander UK award we should apply for. We were finalists at the Santander X UK Awards in the University Category in 2024 – something which probably came about through our initial connection with the Santander Work Café. It’s the best working space in the Isle of Man and Santander has helped us a lot.
“Up to 76% of passengers don’t even consider loyalty points, with most of us booking travel for price and convenience. Arcube has come a long way since I first walked into the Work Café as a student. However, we think the potential to transform all sorts of loyalty programmes, from car rentals to hotels, is still vast.”
