Standard Bank merchants (and other to follow) will no longer allow merchants to enter ‘card not present’ / ‘manual’ transactions from 13 Nov 2017.

Us here at Hotel-Revenue-Manager have assisted a number of establishments to switch over, but what does this all mean? we could compare it moving away from the ‘zip-zap’ to a terminal:

This means we can no longer process deposits from Booking.com and other channels working the same way (agent payment model).
A credit card auth from will no longer hold value.

It has benefits from zero risk to no fraud and so forth, but leaves hospitality operators running smaller entities in a peculiar position:
• as we used to be able to ‘fund’ our cash flow by (card not present) ‘cnp’ charges and
• we were able to filter out false credit card information and release those with ‘no funds’
• we are able to guarantee bookings where a successful deposit were deducted

what now?
• Ensure your business bank account is ‘merchant enabled’, if not contact the business banker and set it up with a few signatures and a once off charge (+/-R500, R300 monthly fee and about 2.8% commission)
• Check with your channel manager if they can host payments, this means every single booking will receive a payment link in the confirmation, the booker follows the link and do an online payment that is 3D secure and PCI compliant, directly into your bank account
• Nightsbridge have ‘paybridge’, STAAH have ‘Teams’ etc
• If your channel manager cannot host, you need to manually take over this function and email guests direct. BUT now you need a website, and the website needs to be ‘e-commerce complaint’, these include MC & Visa logos, owner details, refund policy, and so forth.
• To go ‘manual’ contact paygate or Ecentric, Paybill, snpascan, masterpass or VCS (virtual card services)

Need help, let us know by contacting us and I will supply more info