What are the parts of a hotel payment system?
A hotel payment system has 5 parts:
- A property management system that holds the reservation and folio.
- A booking engine and channel manager that collect cards online and from OTAs.
- A hotel payment gateway that tokenizes cards and routes transactions.
- Card-present terminals at the front desk and outlets, covered on our hotel POS system page.
- A hotel merchant account that settles funds to your bank.
Should I use my PMS vendor's built-in payments?
Built-in PMS payments, such as Cloudbeds Payments or Mews Payments, trade price for convenience. They are fast to switch on, but most charge a blended rate that you cannot negotiate as volume grows.
An independent hotel payment system makes sense in 3 situations:
- Your monthly card volume is above $50,000 and blended pricing costs you more than interchange-plus.
- You run several properties and want one merchant relationship across PMSs.
- Your PMS vendor has frozen funds or capped volume during peak season.
How does hotel payment processing software reconcile payments?
Hotel payment processing software reconciles payments by matching each settled transaction to a PMS folio through the shared token and reference number. The night audit then ties the day's card totals to the processor's deposit, so differences show up the next morning instead of at month end. Hotel payment automation extends this across properties.
Which PMS platforms work with our hotel payment systems?
Our gateway partners hold certified integrations with widely used PMS platforms, including Oracle OPERA Cloud, Mews, Cloudbeds, Stayntouch, and others. Integrations change often, so we confirm your exact PMS version and the features it supports, such as incremental authorization and refunds, before you apply.