Interswitch, an Africa-focused digital payments and commerce company is excited to partner with SlimTrader, Sub-Saharan Africa’s leading turn-key ecommerce solution provider for businesses, on the deployment of a new Payment Monitoring Portal on
the ‘MoBiashara for Hotels’ (MFH) platform. With this partnership,
SlimTrader will be better positioned to facilitate seamless transactions
between Hotels and their guests.
Prior
to the deployment of this feature on the MFH platform, hotels had no
means of verifying payments for walk in guests from bookings on MFH’s
partner travel booking sites. The lack of clarity meant that payments
had to be verified via phone calls or emails - a very inefficient model.
This is the reason why Interswitch; the brand driven to innovate and push the boundaries of digital payments in Africa for the past 13 years, has partnered
with SlimTrader to be the clearing house for payments from online
bookings that are facilitated via SlimTrader’s MoBiashara for Hotels
platform.
Below are excerpts from a chat with Mr. Akeem Lawal, the Divisional CEO, Switching and Processing, Interswitch Limited.
Hello sir. Please explain what the new Payment Monitoring Portal on SlimTrader’s MoBiashara for Hotels is?
The
payment monitoring portal is another milestone in the road map of
products and services we have jointly deployed with Slim Trader to
enhance the business of local hotels across Africa. This follows our
partnership to enable booking and payments for hotels rooms online and
at hotel front desks, the introduction of an integrated hotel management
system as a service that allows hotels manage their inventory online
and on premises as well as perform other value added services at the
front desk like airtime purchase and even providing a prepaid card for
foreign visitors to use while they are in Nigeria. This portal will
allow hotels see all bookings and payments made for hotels whether
online or on premise, see the settlement due to them as well as
reconcile bookings, stays and inventory.
What problems will the Payment Monitoring Portal solve?
The
biggest problem that the Payment Monitoring Portal solves is the lack
of visibility by hotels (their administrators and managers) into their
financial position and condition at any point in time. For hotels
connected to SlimTrader’s MFH, the portal provides real time display of
all payments made to the hotel; whether those payments were made online
on the hotel’s website, on other
travel agency sites or in the hotel’s premises. This means that those
customers will no longer be confronted with situations in which a hotel
is unable to confirm their payment. It also means that hotels will know
exactly how much is in their account for settlement at each point in
time, allowing them to plan their business more effectively
What is Interswitch’s role in this partnership?
Interswitch
provides the payment systems that integrate with MFH’s online and on
premise platforms. We guaranty that once a payment is confirmed; the
hotel will get their settlement the very next business day. We have
partnered with SlimTrader to build this platform in a way that fully
integrates into the Interswitch payment network, the most reliable
payment network in Nigeria today.
Why have you chosen to partner with SlimTrader (MFH)?
Interswitch
is constantly looking to partner with innovative companies that are
solving payment challenges in Africa. SlimTrader is one of such
companies; this is the reason why the company was one of the very first
that Interswitch invested its $10million growth fund in to support their
growth. We have since worked with SlimTrader to significantly enhance
their value proposition in the hospitality space, co-creating several
products, the latest of which is this Payment Monitoring Portal on
SlimTrader’s MoBiashara for Hotels Platform.
When will this go live and how soon can hotels benefit from this?
The
portal is already live and we have started offering it to hotels.
Hotels can get this and the other innovative products and services as
soon as they sign up for SlimTrader’s MFH platform.
What are the benefits to the end-user i.e. the hotel guests?
With
this portal hotel guests never have to worry about discrepancies with
hotel records with reservations made online. Paying online would be just
as good as paying cash at the hotel premises. In fact, paying online
might be better as the hotel guest can find discounts for booking and
paying online on www.hotelnownow.com or other SlimTrader partner online travel agencies.
Now
that Interswitch is stepping in as the ‘clearing house’ for all
payments that come through SlimTrader (MFH) do you think Nigerian Hotels
will be confident about receiving timely disbursement of their funds
and on the basis of that trust alone, serve guests before they receive
payment?
Interswitch
is a global brand with a strong focus on Africa. We are trusted as the
leading payment brand when it comes to making and receiving payments and
settling those payments. This is because we have built and we operate a
secure value driven payment systems that banks, governments, corporate
organizations across several industry segments (from oil and gas to
schools) have been using and trusting for more than 14 years. This
partnership is an opportunity to extend this value proposition to the
hospitality industry as well. And like I said earlier this is just
another milestone. There is more coming.
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