ETW Staff – Mumbai
In the backdrop of the demonetisation drive, Goibibo has launched a feature for its partner properties to collect online payments from their walk-in and offline customers. There is no requirement of POS machines. This is said to be a secure and scalable feature launched by Goibibo for its partners.
About 85 per cent of accommodation booking is offline in India and there is a significant volume of properties in India that have a large percentage of walk-in guests. Also these properties do not have access to POS machines or digital payment instruments. Goibibo aims to solve this problem by enabling 9,000 properties in the first phase.
Properties range from budget hotels, guest houses, BnBs, alternate accommodation, homes, villas, cottages, houseboats etc. It is estimated that there are more than 100,000 such long tail accommodation units in India that lack access to digital payment solutions. Walk-in customers can pay at the hotel via credit and debit cards, EMI linked payments, net banking and a host of wallets. Unlike wallets, this channel does not have any payment limit.
The process to collect online payments from a walk-in guest is as follows: The property manager uses Goibibo’s business dashboard (ingobibo.com) to generate a real time payment link that is sent to the customer’s mobile phone. The customer uses the link on mobile phone to make the payment online via debit/ credit card or net-banking or wallets. All of this is a 3D secure-based transaction. The hotel is notified real time of the success or failure of the payment and the customer is notified too. Goibibo then settles the payment to the hotelier.
Ashish Kashyap, founder and CEO, ibibo, said, “We welcome the demonetisation and digitisation of transactions. Our mission is to organise the accommodation and transportation industry. This payment feature for offline use is a step in this direction. Online travel is one of the few industries that has 100 per cent of its transactions in a digital format. With this feature, we are catalysing the movement from offline to online and also solving problems for the hotel industry.”