Today’s Hotelier sat down with Faheem Khan, Executive Director of Chase Merchant Services, to ask a few questions about how Chase can serve hoteliers
What are some of the most common issues that hoteliers run into when they sign up to accept credit/debit card and mobile wallet payments?
There are many intricacies involved in setting up hotels with payment processing that require lodging industry expertise. Not all payment processors specialize in the lodging industry so some of the most common issues other processors have include:
- Choosing the wrong MCC code at set up resulting in declined or downgraded transactions processing at a higher rate.
- Not integrating properly with a gateway causing delays in set up, processing functionality gaps, and lack of technical support.
- Misunderstanding the difference between host capture and terminal capture leading to transactions not settling on time.
- Setting up card brands incorrectly resulting in confusion between new and existing accounts, potential boarding delays, and not leveraging pre-negotiated pricing that the card brands offer.
- Implementing ineffective reporting causing chaos with statement reconciliation, managing retrieval requests, and ultimately chargebacks.
How is Chase different?
At Chase, we’ve built and educated our dedicated lodging team specifically for the unique needs of the lodging industry. Throughout the 20+ years Chase Merchant Services has been an AAHOA Industry Partner, our dedicated lodging team has been able to build long, meaningful relationships with many AAHOA Members. AAHOA Members help us understand their ongoing concerns regarding chargebacks, funding issues, current payment processor service challenges, statement disclosures and pricing, and current gateway provider challenges. Because of our relationship with AAHOA Members and information-sharing, we know what you need and want, and we know what you don’t like and what doesn’t work. At Chase, we’re laser-focused on addressing the unique needs of every AAHOA hotelier – from the independent owner to the multi-property operator.
There are so many property management systems and gateways for hoteliers to choose from, how can you help them navigate all of the options?
When you’ve been around as long as we have, you know the players. We have experience and relationships with a multitude of gateway providers and property management systems. And we also help AAHOA Members steer through the intricacies of gateways and property management systems to solve your payment services needs regardless of the brand or the size of hotel you own.
We integrate to numerous payment platforms to help you process your transactions efficiently. These include property management systems such as Fosse, SynXis, On-Q, Choice Advantage, Galaxy LightSpeed, Opera, Skytouch, AutoClerk, Visual Matrix, ASI, as well as many others. And, of course, we connect to standalone terminals. Because brands tend to use their own proprietary or preferred property management systems and gateways, we also interface with several brand property management systems.
At Chase, we help hoteliers tackle problems head-on and we can see around the corner to avoid future processing issues. If we can be a resource to you to help you solve some of the challenges associated with payment processing, don’t hesitate to reach out.
Supporting Hoteliers During the COVID-19 Pandemic
With the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the lodging industry, low occupancy rates forced many hoteliers to lay off employees and face catastrophic financial situations. At Chase, we ceased all promotions to AAHOA Members (with exception to our commitment to Today’s Hotelier). Instead, our dedicated lodging team started making calls to our existing merchants to make sure they were doing OK, to see if there was anything we could do to assist, and lent them our concerned and listening ears.We also expeditiously assisted many AAHOA Members in solving their unique issues such as dealing with fraud, excessive chargebacks due to cancellations, funding delays, coordinating communications with PMS providers to assist Members with upgrading/enabling their POS equipment to be CHIP and contactless for a quicker, safer, and more secure method of taking payments, as well as helped wherever else we could.
Faheem Khan is proven leader with 25 years of recognized success in sales and business development. He serves on the AAHOA Board of Directors and is an Executive Director at JPMorgan Chase, leading the lodging and hospitality vertical within Merchant Services.
