Why Open Banking is the Best Payment Gateway for Hotels in 2025

If you run a hotel, you already know that taking payments, especially from international guests, is more complicated and expensive than it should be.

High payment processing costs and siloed systems hurt your margins and create friction at every stage of the guest journey. With only 15% of hospitality businesses using fully integrated solutions, most hotels are stuck with disconnected payment platforms that slow down operations.

This article explores the core problems with traditional payment solutions for hospitality — and why switching to open banking, through a modern provider like Noda, could be the most important financial decision you make this year.

What Do Hotels Need from a Payment Gateway Today?

In 2025, a good hotel payment system does more than process transactions. It shapes the guest experience, supports global reach, and helps hotels stay competitive in a fast-moving market. Here are a hotel payment gateway’s features that matter most.

Multi-Currency Matters

Guests don’t want surprises at checkout. They want to see transparent pricing, and know they’re getting a fair deal. With travellers often urged to pay in local currency, this feature is key to smooth customer experience in hotel payment processing. 

Cross-Border Ready

Whether your guests are from Tokyo, Toronto or Tbilisi, your payment system should work without friction. That means:

• Accepting international cards and wallets (like Alipay, WeChat, Apple Pay)
• Complying with local tax, anti-fraud, and privacy laws
• Supporting regional payment methods with ease

Efficient Cashflow

Cash flow is the engine of hotel operations. Delays between guest payments and available funds can hold back flexibility, payouts to suppliers, and slow down decision-making, as hotels usually don’t take money upfront, but charge customers on the day.

That’s why modern hotels must prioritise same-day or near-instant settlement. This improves liquidity and allows more agile cancellation and refund policies.

Modern Payment Experience

In some markets, like the UK, it’s still common to take card details over the phone for later payment. But this outdated practice puts businesses at risk — card details can be intercepted, and the responsibility falls on the hospitality merchant. It also creates friction: many customers are understandably uncomfortable sharing sensitive info this way.

Hotels and other businesses need safer, more modern solutions. One simple option is payment links. You can send them via any channel — email, SMS, website, or add them to invoices — and they lead customers to a secure, branded payment page.

With Noda, you can generate instant payment links in minutes, no code needed. They use open banking payments, so customers pay directly from their bank to your account. Their experience is fast, secure, and user-friendly. Merchants get low fees and instant settlement. Everyone wins.

Speak Their Language

Language barriers are conversion killers. A payment flow that switches to the guest’s native language creates confidence and clarity.

But localisation goes deeper: it means supporting local regulations, preferred payment tools, and checkout habits. Multilingual support is part of a bigger promise—to meet guests where they are.

Best Hotel Payment Methods: Cards, Open Banking, and More

Now that we’ve looked at the key requirements from a hotel booking payment gateway, how do the main payment methods actually stack up? 

The reality is, most hotels still rely on a mix of payment methods such as cards, digital wallets, open banking. Here’s how they compare. 

Card Payments for Hotels  

Card payments are still the default option for hotel bookings. They are still the second most popular payment option worldwide after digital wallets, which also run on cards. Guests trust them as they’ve been there for a while, and they work almost everywhere.

But for hospitality payment processing, they come with high processing fees, foreign transaction charges, and slow settlements, often 1–3 days. There is also a high risk of fraud and chargebacks, especially for online (card-not-present) bookings. The hospitality sector loses 5–6% of revenue annually to fraud and chargebacks due to last-minute plan changes and cancellations, with 65% of that from card-not-present transactions.

Read more: How to Reduce Chargebacks

PayPal for Hotel Bookings

PayPal is a quick, mobile-friendly, and secure digital wallet, recognised globally for online bookings. It’s available in over 200 countries and supports multiple currencies.
But its international use is expensive. PayPal fees include: 

• 3–4% fees, plus fixed international charges
• Refund discrepancies due to PayPal’s FX rates
• Risk of account freezes for large or flagged transactions

Refunding guests can be a headache—especially when exchange rate shifts mean they get less back than they paid.

Read more: PayPal Fees for Merchants Explained

Bank Transfers as a Payment Method

Bank transfers as a payment method means hotels just invoice customers and give customer bank details to pay to. This could be useful for large or group bookings, where direct payment feels safer.

But they can be slow slow (up to 5 days internationally if in a different currency), manual, and prone to error. Most guests find them inconvenient—especially when booking online.

Best Payment Gateway for Hotels: Open Banking

Open banking (often referred to as pay-by-bank) offers hotels a faster, cheaper, and more secure way to accept payments—especially from domestic and European guests.

Instead of routing payments through costly card networks, open banking allows guests to pay directly from their bank account using secure APIs. Funds arrive in seconds, not days, and there are no card fees, chargebacks, or foreign exchange surprises.

For hotels, this means:

• Instant settlement, improving cash flow and enabling faster refunds or cancellations.
• Lower processing costs, especially compared to credit cards or PayPal.
• Fewer failed payments, as transactions are authorised directly via the guest’s bank.
• Reduced fraud and no chargebacks, since the payer is securely verified through their banking app.

Open banking is already widespread in the UK and EU, and adoption is growing fast across industries. As of March 2025, around 13.3 million people in the UK are actively using open banking. Travel and hospitality platforms like Booking.com and airlines are increasingly offering pay-by-bank as a preferred option.

The only real limitation is awareness: in some regions, open banking is still new, and a few guests may be unfamiliar with the flow. But in markets where it’s available, it’s a brilliant upgrade—giving both you and your guests a smoother, cheaper experience.

Why Merchants Integrate Open Banking with Noda

Looking for a hospitality merchant services built for the modern hotel? Noda specialises in open banking and helps hotels like yours take faster, safer payments—without the high fees.

Our open banking payments give you instant, low-cost pay-by-bank gateway—settling in real time with fees starting at just 0.1%. We connect to over 2,000 banks across 28 European countries, so guests can pay directly from their accounts without delays.

Everything is designed for clarity and ease: multilingual checkout, and a clean interface across mobile and desktop. Prefer to offer cards too? No problem. We include a card gateway with smart routing and fallback options to keep conversions high.

You’ll also get a dedicated onboarding manager to help you go live quickly, plus flexible integration options—API, plugins, instant payment links, or QR codes. With Noda, you upgrade your payments without disrupting your flow.

How to Switch to Noda (and Why It’s Easy)

Switching to Noda is fast, simple, and built around your hotel’s needs. You don’t need a big tech team or months to integrate up our hotel payment solution—just a clear goal and a quick chat with us.

Here’s how it works:

• Step 1: Talk to our team – Book a quick call with one of our hotel payments experts. We’ll walk you through the best setup for your business.
• Step 2: Choose your integration – Use our API, or instant payment links and QR codes—whatever fits your system best.
• Step 3: Get personal onboarding support – Your dedicated onboarding manager will guide you from setup to launch.
• Step 4: Go live in days – With minimal tech lift, you can start accepting open banking (and card) payments in no time.