AmenitizPay: prioritise your time with customers by automating the payments

If you are willing to centralise all your clients payments, no need to look any further as Amenitiz just launched a brand new feature, AmenitizPay. This digital tool allows you to spend less time worrying about your finances so you can prioritise your time to help your clients.

The need and use of a payment solution

Nowadays, the tourist accommodation booking is 80% online, and an online booking necessarily involves an online payment. So in order to make the transactions easier, an automated payment solution is essential. A smooth and secure payment will considerably increase customer satisfaction.

The AmenitizPay payment solution allows travellers to make a payment on your website or via an OTA reservation. This payment solution gives you peace of mind, because you get the confirmation of the transaction, as well as the traveler who will know the payment is secure and that the booking is processed correctly.

In our current times and seeing the complications brought by the global pandemic, a payment solution like AmenitizPay can also help everyone as it is possible to postpone or refund a payment. If the traveler�s plan is altered in any way, you can adapt very quickly and easily.

What exactly is AmenitizPay?

AmenitizPay has first and foremost been developed for you, the hoteliers, to help you centralise all your operations on the Amenitiz platform and to automate payments from your website or OTAs, while being fully compliant.

The different AmenitizPay features:

1) Automate payments coming from any source

During the booking process on your website, the customer can complete the payment according to your own terms and conditions, which you have previously set up. For instance, you can require the full amount when reserving on your site, or you can request only 50% of the amount at the time of the reservation and the remaining 50% when the customer checks-in.

Your customer simply adds his card details as usual and you are guaranteed the transaction is made following your conditions.

If you get the card details from Booking, you can still automate the payment according to your own terms and conditions. You don’t need your payment terminal to make every payment as AmenitizPay can do it for you.

2) Debit/refund a payment directly from Amenitiz

Once the customer processes the payment with you, his debit card is recorded into his file. So when he comes to your property, he can ask for an extra service, such as a breakfast or a drink at the bar, and you can debit the amount from the Amenitiz dashboard in just a few clicks. Or if he had only one meal instead of two, you can refund him the amount you want, directly from the dashboard also. 

This is very simple, you can charge right away or late.

3) Create a payment link

If a traveler finds out about your hotel online or offline but decides to call you to make the reservation, you can accept the reservation and create it in your dashboard, but rather than asking fo a bank transfer, which normally takes several days, you can complete the payment with a few clicks, thanks to AmenitizPay. 

You simply need to create a payment link in the system, to enter the amount of the transaction and your customer will receive an email within seconds with a secure link to complete the payment. The payment is done instantly and the status is updated directly into the system. The customer receives an email to confirm the payment and the reservation, and you also receive an email to let you know that the payment has been approved.

4) Take pre-authorisations on a card

A pre-authorisation simply works like a guarantee from the bank of the card owner. In the past, when customers were checking-in, they would give cash as a deposit. Now, this process is completely digitalised.

There are two ways to take a pre-authorisation. You can do it manually or automatically. AmenitizPay will check if the amount requested is present in the bank account of the customer. If so, this amount will be blocked for a week, without being debited, so you have the option to debit the amount if necessary, in case the customer breaks or steals something for example.

After a week, the pre-authorisation will become inactive and the funds will be released to be available to the client. You can also choose to renew the pre-authorisation manually for another week. This is specifically interesting for longer stays.

A short concrete scenario with John SMITH who booked his stay at Helford�s Inn on May 1st for the first week of June. A �100 pre-authorisation is required.

• From May 1st to May 31st, the status will be �Pending� in the system
• On June 1st, when John checks-in, the status will be �Authorised� (the funds will be blocked but not debited)
• If the amount of �100 is not available on John�s account, the status will be �Failed�
• If something has been broken, and you want to debit the full amount or just some of it, you need to activate the status on �Captured�
• If there was nothing broken or stolen, the full amount will be released by activating the status on �Released� (the status become released automatically after 7 days, so if you want to do it before, you have to do it manually)

The extras of the AmenitizPay service

1) Access to a transactions overview

With the features of AmenitizPay, you can access your transaction history and track payments in one place. You can see the list of payments that have been made, those that are in progress and also those that have been canceled. Everything is shown in one place, with the different statuses, the amounts and the specific reservations. This makes your life easier because you do not need to check every booking individually. 

2) Follow the payments progress

You can also see all your payouts in another tab, with the amount that AmenitizPay will pay you every Monday and some reports that we have created with you and for you.

AmenitizPay gives you knowledge of:

• the amount of your next payout
• the total amount of your payouts since the creation of your AmenitizPay account
• the history of your payouts with clear reports

3) Provide peace of mind for your customers with secure payments

For security reasons, the card registered in the customer’s account remains encrypted no matter the circumstances. It is kept in a virtual safe, guaranteeing you a daily serenity. This means you cannot have access to the card details, neither Amenitiz. On a legal side, this is very important to have safe and secure data, which cannot be stolen.

Very often, �3D secure� is used for online payments. This is the short text message you receive for verification while making a payment. In Europe, a double authentication will be put in motion, “SCA ready”. In addition to receiving the text message, the customer will have to connect to the bank account to validate the payment.

The AmenitizPay system is ready for this authentication, as we want to be in line with European security standards.

4) Know what you are paying with transparent pricing

The Amenitiz subscription does not change with the new AmenitizPay feature. There is only a small fee on each transaction:

• For European cards : 1.4% fee + 25 cents
• For virtual and international cards: 2.9% fee + 25 cents
• For American Express: 3.95% fee

The prices are clear, so you always know what you are paying up front in terms of commission. Payouts are made weekly, every Monday.

With the new AmenitizPay tool, you can accept payments from your customers automatically, easily and securely. And the benefits of Amenitiz do not end there. With our all-in-one solution, you can also gain greatly from a booking system, a channel manager, a PMS and a website creation. Do not wait any longer and request a free demo today.