Hapi and Upgrade Partner to Help Hotels Deploy Modern Payment Options at Scale with Flex Pay

 Hapi, hospitality's data connectivity partner, and Upgrade, a financial technology company that offers affordable and responsible credit, mobile banking, and payment products to mainstream consumers, today announced a partnership to help hotels deploy modern payment options at scale via Upgrade’s buy now, pay later (BNPL) solution, Flex Pay. The collaboration centers on an integration that automates how hotels support Virtual Credit Card (VCC) and other emerging payment methods. It marks the hospitality industry's first automation between a payment provider and a hospitality integration platform, establishing a repeatable model for bringing new payment options into existing hotel group payment workflows. 

Together, Flex Pay and Hapi's connectivity platform and Payments Automations give hotels a scalable way to support modern payment options. Already deployed across thousands of hotels, the solution has significantly reduced VCC mishandling, simplified payment reconciliation, and eliminated payment processing errors. Moreover, it represents the first instance of a global hotel chain moving payments “above property.” 

Travelers expect hotels to offer the same flexible payment options they use elsewhere. According to NerdWallet, 17% of 2026 summer travelers plan to use BNPL to pay for travel, reflecting growing demand for more flexible payment experiences. Offering a new payment option is relatively straightforward, but integrating it into the complex hotel group ecosystem is more challenging. Hotels must coordinate multiple reservation systems, property management systems, payment providers, reconciliation processes, and front desk processes across portfolios of properties, each with its own technology environment. Reservation changes, cancellations, payment timing rules, and check-in events only add to that complexity, contributing to manual payment exceptions, disconnected workflows, and an estimated $1.5 billion in inefficient reconciliation processes. 

When a guest selects Flex Pay during booking, Upgrade settles the reservation with the hotel. Hapi then automatically moves the payment information across the reservation system, PMS, and reconciliation workflows, ensuring each system receives the information it needs at the appropriate time. 

The integration automatically identifies eligible reservations, applies hotel-specific payment rules in real time, and processes payments based on reservation status and hotel policies. The automation eliminates the need for custom integrations or new front desk procedures. Because payments are processed before guests arrive, staff spend less time resolving payment exceptions during check-in and more time focused on welcoming guests. 

Hospitality has no shortage of payment innovation. The challenge is making those innovations work consistently across thousands of properties, multiple technology platforms, and the payment workflows that connect them. Our partnership with Upgrade gives hotels a scalable approach to introducing new payment options without changing the systems and workflows their teams already rely on

Jeff Bzdawka, Hapi CEO

Built on Hapi's API and connectivity layer, the solution establishes a repeatable automation framework for modern hospitality payments. By moving payment data seamlessly between hospitality systems, the same architecture enables hotels to adopt new payment options while allowing technology providers to bring innovations to market more efficiently.

The way people pay for travel is changing, and travelers increasingly expect hotels to offer the same flexibility they experience in other aspects of their lives. As those expectations continue to evolve, our partnership with Hapi makes it easier for hotels to offer those payment experiences, helping them meet evolving guest expectations while creating a smoother booking journey

Tom Botts, president, Flex Pay