The Future of Hotel Payments: Enhancing Security, Convenience, and Guest Experience

The hospitality industry is undergoing a major shift in how payments are handled, driven by evolving guest expectations, increased fraud risks, and the need for greater operational efficiency. From digital wallets to real-time payments, hotels are exploring new ways to streamline transactions while ensuring security and convenience. In this Q&A, Sertifi Co-Founder John Stojka discusses the key trends reshaping hotel payment technology, best practices for safeguarding transactions, and the role of alternative payment methods in the industry's future.

What major shifts are driving the evolution of hotel payment technology, and how should hospitality leaders be preparing for these changes?

First, consumer expectations are changing. Guests want fast, easy ways to pay – and that means paying by your personal preferred method, paying digitally, and knowing your information is secure. It should be easy for guests to pay however they want to, and e-commerce payments are making that easier and easier.

Second, payment fraud is higher than ever in this industry – another main reason the industry is moving to ecommerce solutions. With ecommerce payments, it’s much easier to automate protections because they’re built right into the payment flow. It’s also important to train staff on ways to help prevent fraud, like taking advance payments and limiting same-day check-ins.

Lastly, post-pandemic, many hotels are still managing labor shortages and figuring out ways to reduce costs. Creating easier processes with reliable, user-friendly payment technology is just another way to streamline everyone’s day-to-day. Also, many hoteliers don’t realize how much they’re losing to hidden or unnecessary credit card fees. There are now so many alternative payment options that can help them reduce that burden, like electronic bank transfers and digital wallets.

As hotels increasingly prioritize seamless, digital-first payment experiences, what innovations are setting new industry standards for security and convenience?

Guests today are interested in paying without a physical card. This is a big shift for hoteliers, who like to see a physical card at check-in to trust the guest is the cardholder and can cover the cost of the stay. Digital payments are just as safe but significantly easier on your guest.

Sertifi is part of HTNG’s Payments Community of Interest, whose mission is to make the guest experience seamless from the moment of initial interaction (booking) through departure and to minimize human touchpoints in payments along the entire guest journey. It’s an ambitious goal right now, but it's a conversation the industry’s actively talking about.

With fraud and chargebacks remaining key concerns, what best practices should hoteliers adopt to safeguard transactions without adding unnecessary friction for guests?

The biggest opportunity is to move to ecommerce payments for advance deposits – versus having staff collect payment information via email, phone, or fax and then charging from a card on file. Not only will you see better transaction rates – you’ll drastically lower your risk of information getting mishandled or intercepted by the wrong person.

Once you’re capturing payments securely online, other best practices will come easy. For example, you can capture a CVV code at the time of payment, you can tie a payment to terms and conditions and even a signature document, and you can enable 3-D Secure cardholder authentication.

How can better integration between payment platforms and hotel tech stacks improve operational efficiency and enhance the guest experience?

Any time you can remove humans from the payment flow, the better. That means you’re better maintaining the security and integrity of your guest’s payment information. Plus, without spending time manually entering payment information across different systems, you’re freeing up staff to focus on more strategic tasks that elevate the guest experience. It also frees up accounting staff from having to manually manage payment schedules and posting.

Also, when your systems talk to each other, you’re able to use that payment information in a variety of ways without relying on the guest. As soon as your guest submits one payment, a token is created that can be moved around the property – by your front desk and PMS, your sales team and sales and catering system, your spa, your restaurant, and other areas of the business.

As global travel continues to rebound, how are regional differences in payment preferences shaping the way hotels approach transaction processing and guest expectations?

Hotels need to be prepared to accept different payment types across locations, and it’s not always a one-size-fits-all solution. For example, electronic bank transfers run on the ACH network in the U.S. but the Bacs network in the U.K. So operationally, you need to understand it’s not enough to decide “I’m going to start accepting electronic bank transfers.” You need to consider localization.

Group bookings and event payments have traditionally been complex for hotels. What industry-wide improvements or innovations are helping to simplify these transactions?

These payments have traditionally been complex because they weren’t always supported by the right technology. That’s changed, but the industry has been slow to adopt.

The more integrated a property’s technology ecosystem can be, the easier it’ll be for these teams to transition to digital processes. For example, we partner with Amadeus Delphi.fdc, Oracle OPERA PMS, and STS Cloud, among others, to make transactions as frictionless as possible for both staff and their guests.

You can also benefit from tech innovations like automatic payment schedules, AI-generated security scores to better predict if a card may be fraudulent, and simply the ability to sign and pay in a single system. Ultimately, there are ways now to benefit from a more secure, automated, cheaper, less fraud-prone system.

Looking ahead, what role do you see alternative payment methods—such as digital wallets, real-time payments, or even cryptocurrency—playing in hospitality, and how quickly do you expect widespread adoption?

We all need payments to be easier, more secure, and cost effective. How quickly different methods are adopted depends on how well they make good on that.

The lodging industry was one of the last to adopt chip cards (EMV), but we’re seeing more adoption in digital wallets, real-time payments, bank-to-bank transfers, and locally preferred methods like AliPay, iDEAL, and GIRO. We’re also keeping an eye on newer options. When guest convenience is paramount, you have to be aware of any option someone may prefer.