How can hotels choose the best payment gateway?

Home > Blogs > How can hotels choose the best payment gateway?

How can hotels choose the best payment gateway?

Inner Image Payment Gateway

A payment gateway, as the name suggests, is a merchant service that processes payments for e-commerce businesses and traditional brick-and-mortar stores. In a payment transaction, it handles the front-end processing where it collects, transfers and authorises customer data in real-time to the merchant’s bank, where the transaction is then processed.

A payment gateway, as the name suggests, is a merchant service that processes payments for e-commerce businesses and traditional brick-and-mortar stores. In a payment transaction, it handles the front-end processing where it collects, transfers and authorises customer data in real-time to the merchant’s bank, where the transaction is then processed.

How does a payment gateway work for hotels?

In simple words, a payment gateway is like the card swipe machine that you use in a store. Here, hotel guests can enter their payment details and securely transact with the hotel online. Payment gateways will usually support local compliances such as ‘Verified by Visa’, ‘One Time Password (OTP)’, PCI-DSS or PSD2 — without hotels having to worry about it.

Consider a guest transacting on Simplotel’s Booking Engine, using their credit or debit card, via net banking or via UPI (Unified Payments Interface). These transactions usually come with a set of fees called interchange — this covers handling costs, fraud, bad debt costs and the risk involved in approving the payment — for processing the payments. These fees are usually a percentage of the transaction or are fixed fees or a combination of both, and are based on the payment method.

 

Tips on choosing the best payment gateway for your hotel

1)  Your payment gateway should be able to support you as a merchant in your country and help you process transactions in your preferred currency.

2) A good payment gateway will have a high transaction success rate (TSR). TSR is calculated by dividing the total number of approved transactions by the total number of attempted transactions over a given duration. You should request your booking engine provider to help you with this data. TSR is important because you do not want your customers bouncing off at the last step of your hotel booking engine funnel due to technical glitches. These same customers may resort to other expensive channels to book your hotel. So even though the costs may be slightly more, choose the vendor that provides the best payment success rate and, in turn, a good customer experience.

3) The payment gateway should also function seamlessly on both desktop and mobile devices. It should have an intuitive user interface that collects as little user information as possible and provides a fast load time.

4) The payment gateway should support all the payment methods that your guests would like such as credit cards, debit cards, bank transfers, UPI, mobile wallets, etc.

5) Another important factor to consider is the time the payment gateway would take to remit money into your bank account. Payment gateways usually deposit money into your account on the day of the transaction, the next day or a few days after the transaction. It’s imperative to verify this with your payment gateway before

6) Effective customer support is another important factor.

7) Lastly, ensure to compare costs without losing sight of the above factors.

Simplotel is constantly integrating with hotel technologies to give our customers the best-in-class choice of products! Visit our Integrations Page to learn more about our connected payment gateways.

 

How does a payment gateway work for hotels?

In simple words, a payment gateway is like the card swipe machine that you use in a store. Here, hotel guests can enter their payment details and securely transact with the hotel online. Payment gateways will usually support local compliances such as ‘Verified by Visa’, ‘One Time Password (OTP)’, PCI-DSS or PSD2 — without hotels having to worry about it.

Consider a guest transacting on Simplotel’s Booking Engine, using their credit or debit card, via net banking or via UPI (Unified Payments Interface). These transactions usually come with a set of fees called interchange — this covers handling costs, fraud, bad debt costs and the risk involved in approving the payment — for processing the payments. These fees are usually a percentage of the transaction or are fixed fees or a combination of both, and are based on the payment method.

 

Tips on choosing the best payment gateway for your hotel

1)  Your payment gateway should be able to support you as a merchant in your country and help you process transactions in your preferred currency.

2) A good payment gateway will have a high transaction success rate (TSR). TSR is calculated by dividing the total number of approved transactions by the total number of attempted transactions over a given duration. You should request your booking engine provider to help you with this data. TSR is important because you do not want your customers bouncing off at the last step of your hotel booking engine funnel due to technical glitches. These same customers may resort to other expensive channels to book your hotel. So even though the costs may be slightly more, choose the vendor that provides the best payment success rate and, in turn, a good customer experience.

3) The payment gateway should also function seamlessly on both desktop and mobile devices. It should have an intuitive user interface that collects as little user information as possible and provides a fast load time.

4) The payment gateway should support all the payment methods that your guests would like such as credit cards, debit cards, bank transfers, UPI, mobile wallets, etc.

5) Another important factor to consider is the time the payment gateway would take to remit money into your bank account. Payment gateways usually deposit money into your account on the day of the transaction, the next day or a few days after the transaction. It’s imperative to verify this with your payment gateway before

6) Effective customer support is another important factor.

7) Lastly, ensure to compare costs without losing sight of the above factors.

Simplotel is constantly integrating with hotel technologies to give our customers the best-in-class choice of products! Visit our Integrations Page to learn more about our connected payment gateways.