A payment gateway is the service that securely processes online card payments for hotel bookings, connecting the booking engine or PMS to card networks and banks, and handling authorization, capture and refunds.
When a guest books, the gateway encrypts the card data, requests authorization from the issuing bank and returns the result to the booking engine in seconds. Modern gateways also handle alternative payment methods, currency conversion and strong customer authentication requirements.
For hotels, the key questions are integration with the existing stack, settlement times, fees per transaction and how disputes are managed. A gateway that is not integrated with the PMS forces manual reconciliation, which is where most payment errors are born.
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