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“Guests today hardly think about payments, until something goes wrong.”
They move from app to app and service to service without ever touching their wallet. Then they walk into a hotel or a store, and suddenly they are queuing at the desk, repeating their card details, signing multiple bills. That is the moment they feel the gap. As someone who has spent almost 25 years in payments, I know that gap is where most difficult conversations with merchants begin.
From my side of the table, one thing has become obvious. Payments are either invisible and trusted, or they are a constant source of friction, cost and worry. The difference is not just which technology you pick; it is whether you treat payments as a strategic journey with one partner, or as a patchwork of components that nobody fully owns.
How the world changed overnight
Before the pandemic, many hotels and retailers could still rely on the “front desk and the terminal” model. Guests arrived, queued, handed over cards, and accepted that paying at the bar or the spa meant another round of printing and signing.
It was not perfect, but it was familiar. When everything shut down and then reopened, that way of working collapsed. Hotels had to take deposits and payments at a distance, manage cancellations and no-shows, and still deal with guests on site. Retailers had to blend in-store, online, click-and-collect and Tax Free almost from one day to the next.
What that exposed is something I call the friction problem. You had one provider for e-commerce, another for terminals, a local bank in one country, a different one in another, and systems like PMS and POS sitting on the side.
Staff were manually sharing card details, finance teams were spending days reconciling different reports, and IT was fighting to keep all these pieces talking to each other. Meanwhile, the guest expects to book once and enjoy the stay with as few interruptions as possible.
The cost you do not see on the invoice
When merchants talk to me about challenges, they almost always start with one word: cost. Not just “the rate”, but the feeling that they do not really know what they are paying for.
Bundled acquiring models can hide fees inside a single line. If you do not break that down, you cannot see where you are losing money or where you could do better. Then you add the internal cost: teams reconciling payments by hand, correcting mistakes, chasing missing information. All of that has a price.
Security is the second topic that comes up. Many believe that once they have a PCI Level 1 provider, they are “fully compliant”. In reality, that is only part of the story.
If staff still write card numbers on paper, or if sensitive data is handled outside secure systems, the risk is still there. With more revenue moving through online channels and card-not-present flows, fraud and chargebacks can quickly become a painful line on the P&L if you do not take this seriously.
What it really means to merchants
There is a lot of marketing language around Full Stack Payments. From my conversations with hotel groups and large merchants, the definition is much simpler.
They want one partner who can support the whole flow, from gateway to acquiring to currency conversion, and who can integrate with their PMS, POS and other systems without making their lives harder. They want one point of contact and contract, one support team, and one view of the truth.
In a hotel, that looks like this:
You collect the guest’s card once, you tokenise it, and then that token follows the guest everywhere; front desk, restaurant, bar, spa, even the gift shop. No more asking again and again. For returning guests, you can even connect that token to a loyalty programme or a QR code so they simply arrive and enjoy. For finance, you support this with clear, interchange++ pricing and a proper comparison against their existing provider, using their actual statement data.
Only then can they see that Full Stack Payments is not just a nicer story, but a better business case.
Why merchants are looking for partners, not suppliers
Over the years, the relationship merchants want from payments has changed. They are no longer looking for someone who drops off terminals and disappears. They expect a partner who sits next to them, understands their pain, and helps them navigate change.
That means talking about their future plans, not just today’s setup. It means explaining what new regulations or security standards will mean in practice. It means being honest when something goes wrong and staying visible until it is fixed.
At Planet, this is where the key account model and local teams make a difference. Our role is not only to say “yes, we can do that”, but also to say “here is a better way to do it, here is the impact on your operations, here is what finance and IT need to see”.
When you work with big hotel groups or international retailers, you are with them for years. You cannot behave like a short-term supplier. You must become part of how they think about technology, guest experience and revenue.
Where this is all heading
If you ask me where we are going, I see three main trends.
- First, payment will continue to become more invisible for the guest. They will carry fewer physical cards and expect more to be handled by their phones and pre-stay flows. Terminals will be there, but for many journeys the authorisation will already be done, and the token will do the work.
- Second, services like Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) are not just for “young people” anymore. In a tough economic climate, many guests use BNPL to secure travel, experiences and higher-value purchases even if they could pay in full. For merchants, this is both a conversion tool and a way to meet guests where they are. The question is not whether to offer it, but how to integrate it cleanly into the wider stack.
- Third, there is a strong push to consolidate. Running five or six different providers across channels and markets is no longer sustainable for Tier 1–3 hospitality and luxury retail brands. They want fewer contacts, fewer points of failure and more accountability.
Payments, connected with software, Pay in Your Currency PYC and Tax Free (Full Stack payments) in a single partnership, are one of the most powerful ways to achieve that. Not because it sounds modern, but because it removes friction, exposes the real numbers, and lets teams focus on what really matters: looking after their guests and growing the business.
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