Full-service payment provider Concardis now offers hotel operators an interface between its solution for the hotel and restaurant industry – Concardis Payment Gateway (CPG) – and the hotel management software solution from Infor. Through the connection with Infor Hospitality, the Eschborn-based payment service provider further cements its position as the preferred payment partner for the hotel industry: Integrated solutions for automated processes are in high demand among customers. As a pilot customer, The Rilano Hotel München has successfully tested the new CPG-interface to Starlight PMS from Infor. 

‘We are thrilled to be supporting Concardis and that we had the opportunity to test the new interface in various phases of implementation,’ says Jan-Nicolas Corbach, general manager of The Rilano Hotel München. ‘We’re always looking for ways to optimise our front-end processes. The automated data transfer between our payment solution and our hotel management software saves us, and above all our guests, valuable time. This also helps to streamline administrative processes at reception and in accounting.’

‘Guest surveys show the relevance of fast, efficient service at reception. Infor supports hotels in their digitisation strategies in order to offer them new opportunities,’ says Stefan Bezold, executive sales director of hospitality in German-speaking Europe at Infor. ‘Concardis gives us an important building block for streamlining and automating all payment processes, both in the front end as well as the back end.’

‘Concardis has strong roots in the hotel industry, so we know precisely which solutions are truly needed: interfaces between individual digital systems enables hotel operators to really increase their efficiency. Close collaboration with the pre-eminent providers of hotel management software is therefore a priority for us,’ says Thomas Gregory, chief product officer of Concardis Payment Group.

With Payment Gateway, hotel operators receive from Concardis a software-controlled EMV card reader, which can simply be connected to the hotel management system from Infor (HMS or Starlight PMS) in the customer’s network. In doing so, all reservations and transactions flow together; the solutions interlock seamlessly. Thanks to a transfer of reference numbers between the systems, manual reconciliation is no longer necessary, for example – a real relief for accounting departments. 

Hotel operators also benefit with regard to data protection: Concardis now works with tokenisation as standard for Payment Gateway. All payment data are compiled and processed by Concardis. The hotel operator never comes into direct contact with the data – thus eliminating the need to go through the complicated PCI DSS data protection certification processes. The new solution also supports the contactless girocard application and all other international debit card brands.

In addition to national payment options, Concardis also offers all prevalent international credit card brands for international guests – even with Dynamic Currency Conversion upon request as well as a multilingual user interface. And acceptance of Alipay, the favoured mobile payment solution from China, has been recently fully integrated.

Aside from the new interface to the Infor Hospitality Management Solution, Concardis also offers integration with other popular property management systems in Germany. Partnerships with additional hotel software providers and an expansion of the interface functions are planned.