Speed Up Guest Service & Simplify the Payment Workflow in Your Hotel Operations

London, United Kingdom, October 21, 2015 (Newswire.com) - ​​​​​Gone are the days when guests would email or call a hotel to make bookings, and wait for hotel’s confirmation to fax out a credit card authorisation form.  Today, guests have the facility of booking their hotels online, every single hotel that does not want to lose out on this online business, not only must have  a website with realtime web booking engine but also must provide a online payment option to guests, chances are that guests might change their mind and get swayed away to other hotel’s if hotels website does not provide a confirmed reservation, so a payment gateway increases the chances of acquiring this business.

Traditionally property management systems for long  have provided interfaces to external systems like Epabx, electronic locking, call accounting, in-room entertainment, mini bars, the GDS and OTAs, allowing these systems to talk to each other in order to automate cross-system processes.  With the onset of online business, PMS are now also expected to offer payment options for online transactions. Accepting online payments is a big challenge and hotels must ensure that they provide a secure payment gateway which will protect the credit card details by encrypting sensitive information, such as credit card numbers, expiry dates and security code. This will ensure that information is passed securely between the guest and the hotel and also between the hotel and the card processor.

"mycloud, property management system has been very helpful with managing and organizing our hotel operations. If I have have any questions, comments, or concerns, mycloud team is always willing to help me. I always get a very quick response from them! Amazing support!"

Audrey Stevens, Legend of french Lick

There are two basic methods of processing credit card transactions, first is most widely used and is typically a credit card terminal or hard wired EDC machine. Hotel staff will run the card on the machine and input the transaction amount and let the machine do rest by printing out a  charge slip. Second method is through Software Processing, this is where a software payment gateway comes in play, today every single  online transaction goes through a payment gateway to process credit card. A payment gateway is like an online terminal, this method allows a hotel to setup and charge percentage of the reservation or a flat fee upon time of booking, hotel can also simply authorise complete reservation amount or save credit card profile to process it at time of checkout or if the guest is a No-Show.

The new Payment Gateway by mycloud offers cost-effective and cutting-edge integrated payment card processing solutions. It seamlessly integrates with banks and other payment transaction processors and is the ideal solution for hotel business which seamlessly plugs into all mycloud applications, like PMS, POS, Web booking engine and requires no additional logins. The system comes in 2 versions, “Credit card not present” with Tokenisation and “Credit card present” with card authrozation and settlement.

mycloud Payment gateway uses industry standard SSL encryption to transmit data, which ensures that the customer’s and the hotel’s data remains secure. This is the same technology used by banks and online trading companies.The SSL verification adds credibility and integrity to the hotels, which any hotelier knows, takes a long time to build. This online tool ensures that hotel guests feel confident as well as secure while booking at hotel website, a secure payment gateway is an absolute must for hotels to compete in the global market; it provides ease of use to the guest as well as complete security for any details that they are required to share.

As the solution integrates with payment and checkout process, payments for bookings, deposits and any other items where card details are collected – either on hotel's website through the booking engine or in the back-office by staff – are processed and reconciled fully automatically, it reduces the steps required to process card payments, and eliminating keying errors, this interface securely facilitates credit card acceptance through the PMS. Integrating your PMS with a payment gateway removes the need for a stand-alone credit card terminal and speeds up the check-in/check-out process.

The Payment Gateway by mycloud supports Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Diners Club, JCB, Apple Pay, Debit cards, Paypal as well as other local network cards depending on the country.

In order to process credit cards hotel will need a merchant account.

About mycloud

mycloud is developed and promoted by Prologic First– a hospitality technology innovator and a leading international hospitality IT solutions provider.Prologic First is a group of companies that develops and internationally markets integrated software solutions for the hospitality sector. Prologic First software solutions are in use at more than 1300 sites in 35 countries. Professionals formed Prologic First more than a decade ago with extensive experience in developing and deploying hotel IT solutions. For more information visit www.prologicfirst.com.​