November 26, 2025
In hospitality, the guest experience begins long before check-in. Whether booking a hotel room, reserving a table, or purchasing add-on experiences, today’s travellers expect everything to be unified in one seamless journey. Behind the scenes, however, hospitality platforms face a complex reality: onboarding multiple merchants, managing varied commission structures, coordinating payouts, and ensuring compliance, all while maintaining a consistent brand experience.
Cardstream’s PayFac-as-a-Service (PFaaS) gives hospitality marketplaces the infrastructure to manage this complexity at scale. It enables platforms to operate as a Merchant of Record, onboard Sub-Merchants instantly, automate split payments, and control the full flow of funds, without carrying the cost and burden of building their own payment facilitation capability.
Becoming a Marketplace Merchant of Record
As hospitality platforms expand, the ability to operate as the Merchant of Record becomes increasingly valuable. It allows marketplaces to own the customer relationship, design their own commercial model, and deliver a unified payment experience across hotels, restaurants, events, and local experiences.
Cardstream’s PFaaS model supports this by providing the technical and regulatory foundations beneath the marketplace. Transactions are processed securely, compliance is managed, settlements are scheduled, and the platform maintains full visibility across its entire network of partners. The marketplace retains ownership of the brand experience, while Cardstream ensures the payment infrastructure behind it remains reliable and compliant.
Virtual Onboarding for Hotels, Restaurants & Experience Providers
In hospitality, onboarding needs to be fast and flexible. Platforms work with a wide variety of providers — independent hotels, restaurant groups, seasonal venues, local tour operators, spa services, and more. A slow or manual onboarding process can limit growth and create unnecessary friction.
Cardstream enables a smooth digital onboarding journey. Sub-Merchants submit their details online, automated verification checks run instantly, and accounts are activated without delay. This allows marketplaces to expand quickly, support regional or seasonal growth, and onboard partners without paperwork or manual review bottlenecks.
Managing Complex Hospitality Payments
Hospitality transactions often involve multiple services purchased together, such as a room booking, dining reservations, spa treatments, or excursions. Cardstream’s PFaaS is designed for these multi-merchant, multi-service transactions.
Payments can be collected through a single checkout experience, and the system then applies the marketplace’s own logic for fees, commissions, and settlements. The marketplace retains its share, while the appropriate amounts are routed to each provider automatically according to the defined rules.
Scaling Across Locations and Service Types
As platforms evolve, they often diversify, adding new types of Merchants, expanding into new regions, or offering bundled destination experiences. Cardstream’s PFaaS scales with this growth, supporting thousands of sub-merchants and handling high-volume transaction flows without performance impact.
Marketplaces can begin with a small group of hotels and scale into a full hospitality ecosystem. Each new partner can be integrated seamlessly without additional development, making expansion efficient and predictable.
Integrated Compliance & Risk Management
Hospitality presents unique risk challenges such as cancellations, no-shows, delayed service delivery, and dispute-prone bookings. Cardstream’s PFaaS includes the compliance and risk management infrastructure needed to support these scenarios.
The platform provides fraud screening, transaction monitoring, chargeback management, and PCI-DSS compliance. This ensures both the marketplace and its Sub-Merchants are protected, reducing liability and preserving trust across the entire ecosystem.
Full Visibility for Marketplaces & Merchants
Transparency is essential when multiple merchants depend on a marketplace for their revenue. Cardstream gives both the platform and each individual Sub-Merchant clear visibility of their financial activity.
Marketplaces can track overall performance, settlement statuses, fees, refunds, and chargebacks. Meanwhile, hotels, restaurants, and experience providers can access their own information showing how much they will receive and when. This clarity supports better financial planning and strengthens partner relationships.
Powering the Next Era of Hospitality Payments
Cardstream’s PayFac-as-a-Service enables hospitality platforms to grow faster, operate more efficiently, and deliver exceptional experiences to both guests and providers. By combining flexible payment logic, streamlined onboarding, automated settlements, and robust compliance, PFaaS creates a foundation that supports innovation across the entire hospitality journey.
Whether building a new hospitality marketplace or enhancing an established one, Cardstream provides the infrastructure needed to scale confidently and deliver seamless, intelligent payment experiences at every touchpoint.
