The hidden complexity behind hotel payments – and how Mews is changing things

Getting paid is a fundamental part of any business. But for some hotels, property management and financial management are still separate conversations. 

A guest taps their card at check-in and, from the hotel's perspective, the transaction looks instantaneous. Behind that moment is a chain of banks, card schemes, acquirers and payment providers, each playing a role in getting the money from guest to hotel. 

For hotel operators, that complexity has traditionally been someone else's problem. It creates friction, limits visibility and makes it harder to build the digital experiences guests increasingly expect. Mews Payments was created to absorb this complexity. And now, we’re working towards improving visibility and control over these processes. 

That is why the recent authorization of Mews Financial Services B.V. as an Electronic Money Institution (EMI) by De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) is significant. Mews Financial Services B.V., the regulated subsidiary of Mews, will now allow Mews to hold money on behalf of customers and operate more directly within the flow of funds as we develop and launch capabilities in this new infrastructure. 

It’s the topic of the latest episode of Matt Talks Hospitality, featuring Maximilian Lehmann, CEO of Mews Financial Services B.V. 

But why should hoteliers care about who holds which financial license? Because it extends what the technology underneath their payments can do, building on infrastructure that already processes hotel payments at scale today. 

From payment processor to financial infrastructure 

Mews has been working in hotel payments for around a decade. The EMI license represents the next step: moving closer to the underlying financial infrastructure and improving the capabilities that are currently offered. 

An EMI license sits between a payment institution license and a banking license. It allows Mews Financial Services B.V. to handle payments and hold money, but it does not make Mews a bank or allow it to lend. 

Being trusted to hold money is a compliance milestone, not just a technical one. To be granted the license, Mews Financial Services B.V. had to build out the fraud monitoring, anti-money-laundering controls and safeguarding processes regulators require of any institution handling customer funds. It also had to prove its infrastructure could operate safely at that standard from onboarding through to payout. That work is what could ultimately give hotel operators something more valuable than another payment option: a financial layer designed around the way hotels actually operate.

Why hospitality needs a different approach to payments 

Hotel payments are fundamentally different from many other digital transactions. 

A guest might book months before arrival. A hotel may pre-authorize a card, capture payment later, process a deposit, handle additional charges and settle everything across different systems and currencies. 

That complexity makes hospitality a particularly interesting environment for embedded financial services. 

"Booking a holiday, blocking their money on a card… We have pre-authorization, and then capturing it later – three months later, sometimes six months or a year later," said Lehmann. "It's very, very different" from a straightforward ecommerce purchase. 

There is also a second consideration: guest experience. 

Hotels are understandably cautious about introducing anything that could cause a payment to fail at a critical moment. The front desk is where technology becomes a real-world experience, and payment friction can quickly become guest friction. 

That's why the opportunity is bigger than adding more ways to pay. The ambition is to rethink the financial processes around the hotel stay and make them feel as natural as the rest of the guest journey. 

Less fragmentation, more visibility 

Today, payment data can be spread across multiple systems. Reconciling what happened at the point of sale with what eventually reaches the hotel's bank account can involve significant manual work. 

That creates operational overhead and makes it harder to get a clean picture of cash flow. A more deeply embedded financial layer could connect the transaction, payment and accounting flows much more closely. 

The goal, as Matt put it during the conversation, is to move away from a world where someone is manually processing card details and reconciling receipts, towards one where the hotel's financial systems are connected end to end. 

That has implications beyond efficiency. Better visibility into the movement of money can give operators greater confidence in their financial data and reduce the number of manual processes between a guest making a payment and the hotel reconciling it. 

Local payments without the local complexity 

Another opportunity is the ability to support payment methods that are specific to individual markets. 

European hospitality is particularly fragmented in this respect. Guests in different countries have different expectations around how they pay, from iDEAL in the Netherlands to girocard in Germany and Bancontact in Belgium. 

Mews Financial Services B.V. intends to introduce local payment methods market by market, starting with iDEAL, and offer a simpler onboarding process when doing so. For hotel groups operating across multiple countries, this could become particularly valuable. Instead of treating local payment methods as another layer of integrations to manage, they could increasingly become part of the core financial infrastructure. 

The beginning, not the finished product 

The license does not mean hotel operations change overnight. Mews Financial Services B.V. is still building, with a small-scale first release planned for early next year and a country-by-country rollout expected from 2027 onwards. As new capabilities and geographies are launched, customers will be invited to test and adopt, ensuring maximum impact for hoteliers. 

EMI-enabled payment services will be available for eligible properties in selected EEA countries. Outside the EEA, payments continue to be processed by licensed PSP partners. Mews Financial Services B.V. does not provide EMI services outside the EEA. 

Hotel owners and operators do not need to change their payment setup today. But they should be aware that the financial layer underneath hotel operations is becoming an increasingly important part of the technology stack. 

Guests should never know how many systems a hotel uses; they only see one hotel. While behind the scenes, the hotel may still be running several disconnected systems, the long-term opportunity of embedded financial services is to make those systems feel like one. 

For hotel owners, operators and finance teams, that could mean fewer manual processes, better visibility and more flexibility around how money moves through the business. 

And if the hotel operating system can become the financial infrastructure too, the payment at the front desk is no longer an isolated transaction. It becomes one connected part of the entire guest and financial journey. 

Want to dive deeper into the world of hotel payments? 

Watch the full episode