The Client
Guestline is the market-leading provider of advice and services that enable hoteliers to better manage every aspect of their operations. Guestline offers a complete solution from till systems, check-in and online room payments to stocktaking services.
In 2007, Guestline was looking for ways to grow its revenue. They realised there was an opportunity to broaden the functionality of their Reslynx Property Management System with a payment gateway to so its merchants could reliably accept online payments.
Guestline was also keen to help hoteliers comply with PCI regulations. ‘Because many hotel bookings are made when the cardholder is not present, hoteliers must be extra vigilant about PCI compliance,’ explained Andrew Williams, Product Strategy Director, Guestline.
‘The way the Trust Payments ecommerce gateway tokenises card data was one of the key reasons why we initially chose to partner with them. Thanks to their tokenisation, we managed to de-scope some payments from the PCI audit process which makes life simpler for our merchants.’
Andrew Williams
Product Strategy Director, Guestline
The relationship was productive and profitable, continuing on a referral partnership basis as Guestline provided the Trust Payments gateway to its hoteliers for 12 years.
The Challenge
Trust Payments is one of just a few payment service providers with its own acquiring service, meaning it can offer a full end to end solution including using ecommerce, POS terminals and acquiring. Guestline took the strategic decision to re-position itself from a partner to a full Independent Sales Organisation (ISO) and, in September 2019, signed an agreement to offer the full end to end Trust Payments solution set to its hoteliers.
Among the benefits are that Guestline could keep the associated acquiring revenue they had previously been passing to the banks.
“When we went through the RFP process to become an ISO, we had several members of the Trust Payments senior team in the room with us. That meant a lot to us. The decision-making process was fast and we got a lot done quickly. It was a different story with some of their competitors whose senior people weren’t in the room – and in many cases, they weren’t even in the UK.”
Andrew Williams
Product Strategy Director, Guestline
Guestline is known for its great customer service and was keen to retain its close, direct relationships with their hoteliers. So, unlike most other ISOs, Guestline decided to provide customer services to its own merchants rather than having Trust Payments perform that role. Guestline would need help to develop the necessary customer service skills and capabilities in-house as well as learning how to most effectively sell its new full suite of payment solutions.
The Solution
The two organisations had always enjoyed a close working relationship and, as part of its strategic transition to becoming a fully-integrated ISO, Guestline asked Trust Payments for some extra help.
Trust Payments put together an intensive training course covering all aspects of its payment offering. Training documents were prepared and departmental courses were arranged across the business including Sales, Operations and more. The two organisations also partnered in marketing campaigns to support Guestline in its transition to becoming an ISO.
“We value the flexibility of Trust Payments’ technology which is matched by the responsiveness of the team at all levels. If we need to request an enhancement, it can be signed-off and executed quickly without lots of tiers of approvals.“
Andrew Williams
Product Strategy Director, Guestline
Guestline can quickly access reporting on all its hoteliers through single point reporting and data can be pulled directly into their systems through Open ended APIs. Services such as pay by email link have been especially welcomed for table service during COVID-19.
The Solution
‘We came from the hospitality sector, not payments,’ said Andrew.
“The support we received from Trust Payments to make this strategic transition from a partner to a payments ISO was outstanding – they held our hand every step of the way.”
Andrew Williams
Product Strategy Director, Guestline
The Trust Payments and Guestline teams remain closely aligned with review meetings every two days, a weekly report as well as Quarterly Business Reviews.
Since becoming an ISO, Guestline has onboarded nearly 200 hotels with its full suite of payment products.
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Our systems are scanned quarterly using the Qualys PCI Platform, an independent Qualified Security Assessor (QSA) and approved vendors – Omnicybersecurity (UK) & Forgenix (US) – to ensure compliance with the security requirements of the card schemes.
We follow a number of rigorous security procedures on a daily basis including, but not limited to, continuous monitoring of our perimeter, dark web monitoring, and internal checks to ensure that CIA triad is maintained at all times.
