More than ever, hotels are placing additional focus on safeguarding the cardholder payment experience and digital business strategies. It is crucial to adapt your business, your employees and your community to a new market reality.
We’re here to help. Payment acceptance is an essential part of conducting business. Adjusting to meet guests’ demands requires an evaluation of how payments can help pivot your operations and overall strategy.
150% growth in contactless usage in the U.S. since March 2019.1
Providing a touchless experience
Guests are relying on digital technologies more than ever to interact, book and pay for goods and services. Simply accepting credit and debit card payments is no longer enough. How you accept card payments is an important factor to customers.
Contactless/mobile wallets
The ability to accept contactless payments should be an essential component of operating safely and maintaining a clean environment. Contactless cards, mobile wallets and smartwatches are all convenient and quick ways to pay while avoiding contact at the point of sale.
EMV/NFC-enabled POS devices are the most essential part of accepting contactless payments in the hotel and on the go. Implementing contactless payments may be a matter of configuring and activating the capability on existing devices across locations. If your devices are not EMV/NFC-enabled, it will require an investment in new, more sophisticated devices at the guest checkout or other point of sale.
We’re ready to help you identify a strategy for implementing contactless payments across your organization. With flexible equipment rental and subscription programs, there is no need to wait to explore how to meet customer demand for contactless payments.
31 million Americans tapped a Visa contactless card or digital wallet in March 2020, up from 25 million in November.1
eCommerce / omni-commerce
As online shopping and ordering skyrockets, being able to expand and scale your eCommerce payment functionality will be critical to sustaining revenue. Mobile payments, in-app payments and online payments should all be part of a comprehensive eCommerce strategy. Payment acceptance should not be limited to credit and debit cards but also include digital wallets (e.g.Google Pay, Apple Pay), money transfer services (e.g. Zelle, PayPal, Venmo) and ACH transactions.
Cloud-based payment solutions can help you simplify your operations and uncover strategic insights that can help your hotel to deliver a distinctive shopping experience and drive more revenue.
74% rise in online transaction volumes in most retail sectors in March 2020 compared to the same period last year.2
Managing cash flow
You can expedite cash flow and control payment acceptance expenses with funding solutions and commercial card optimization.
Funding solutions
When it comes to cash flow, faster is always better. By having money readily available you can invest in upgrading technologies, improve customer engagement or cover the costs of the unexpected.
Benefits of cash flow management
- Be ready to invest in any opportunity or mitigate a risk
- Balance deposits versus withdrawals to avoid delays in paying bills, invoices or other cost
- Know when cash will be available for scheduled payments to suppliers and partners
- Easier reconciliation of batch versus funding deposits
Fast Track Funding
Fast Track Funding is great for hotels that close out batches late at night, or for hotels that are experiencing funding delays of two business days. Fast Track Funding is available for any hotel within the United States regardless of state, region or banking relationship.
New technologies and new payment networks are changing the way money moves.
Solutions that lower acceptance costs
Saving money does not need to come at the expense of delivering a great customer experience or limiting goods or services. Interchange and assessment rates make up the majority of card acceptance costs, and we offer ways to optimize and reduce these costs.
Based on our customer analysis, most businesses are missing the opportunity to accept commercial cards at their optimal interchange rate. Our payment consultants have developed analysis software and services to enable lower interchange rates on commercial card transactions. Commercial card usage has been steadily growing since 2014, and usage will continue to mature until 2022, which means market usage of these cards is still on the rise.4
Save money without any additional cost or disruption to your current business operations.
Fraud/security
Providing a secure payment experience is top of mind for you and your guests. Contactless payments utilize EMV/chip card technology which inherently makes contactless transactions safer.
The increase in online transactions also means taking a closer look at card-not-present (CNP) fraud. As more guests turn to digital transactions, it’s important you have the security tools in place to authenticate card not present transactions and prevent malicious account takeover and phishing schemes.
Today’s advanced fraud solutions can provide a frictionless cardholder experience while offering stronger security and better authentication protocols.
A note on friendly fraud
CNP transactions have associated rules and chargeback guidance that may be new to businesses that are expanding into online transactions. Our payment professionals understand the rules and requirements for all types of transactions so they can help your business to improve chargeback management and avoid fraud losses.
13% value growth year over year in fraudulent-attempted transactions in March.
80% drop in counterfeit fraud when merchants adopted EMV enabled devices.5
We’re here to help
It’s important to work with a payment processor that understands your business and has the capability to analyze card payment data across all your environments. That’s where we can help. Our payment professionals leverage their industry knowledge and analyze data to make actionable recommendations to help you better manage card payments. By evaluating the business’ entire card authorizing and processing environment, we can help you cost-effectively deliver a satisfying and secure payment experience.
Learn more www. Elavon.com
1Visa 2ACI Worldwide 3Payments Journal 4Mercator 5Business News Daily
©2021 Elavon, Inc. All rights reserved. Elavon is a trademark in the United States and/or other countries. All rights reserved. All features and specifications are subject to change without notice. This document is prepared by Elavon as a service for its customers. The information discussed is general in nature and may not apply to your specific situation. 04/21
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