# Taking payment in a Singapore hotel, hostel or serviced apartment https://www.uniwebpay.com/industries/hotels-and-accommodation/ *Last updated: 2026-08-03* Accommodation is the trade where the payment terminal sees the smallest share of the money. Booking platforms collect from the guest and remit on their own cycle; the terminal handles direct bookings, the extras, and the check-out. Getting the second half right is what stops the first half from being the only thing anybody looks at. **In short** - Platform bookings never touch your terminal. Expect two sets of books and plan for it. - Direct bookings are the ones you control — and the ones worth making easy to pay for. - Check-out is a queue problem at a fixed time of day, not a rate problem. - International guests arrive with international wallets. This is the trade where that is most obvious. - Deposits and incidental holds are a real question and this site does not publish how they work here. ## The platform half, and why it is a separate set of books A guest who books through an online travel agent usually pays the platform, not you. The platform collects, holds, deducts its commission and remits on its own schedule. None of that passes through your merchant account, and no acquirer — including this one — reconciles it for you. So a hotel runs two sets of numbers permanently: platform revenue on each platform’s statement, and everything else through the merchant account. That is not a problem to be solved, it is the shape of the trade, and the mistake is treating one of them as the whole picture. What an acquirer can do is make the second set easy to close. With Uniweb Pay, cards, wallets and Dynamic PayNow settle into one payout in Singapore dollars in T+1 batches, with each batch and its fees visible in the merchant portal and a daily statement available as PDF. The consequence worth acting on is commercial rather than technical: every direct booking is worth more than the same booking through a platform, so the payment path for a direct booking should be the easiest one on the property — not the one that requires an email, a call back and a card number read out loud. ## Check-out is a queue at a fixed time of day Unlike a shop, a hotel knows exactly when its rush is. Everybody leaves in the same ninety minutes, most of them with a folio to settle, several of them with questions about it, and all of them with a taxi waiting. That makes method coverage on one device the operational decision rather than the rate. A guest reaching for a wallet the front desk cannot take, at 11:40am, with four people behind them, is a queue problem that becomes a review. A Sunmi P3 takes contactless, chip and insert, magnetic stripe and QR wallets on one unit and prints the receipt — which matters more here than in most trades, because a guest expecting to claim the stay on expenses wants a printed folio receipt in their hand rather than a promise of an email. ## International guests, and the wallet they arrived with Accommodation is the trade where the visitor mix is most obvious and least deniable — a hotel knows where its guests are from, because it checked them in. Guests pay with what already works at home. Alipay+, WeChat Pay and UnionPay are the difference between a smooth check-out and an awkward one for a large share of visitors to Singapore, and Alipay+ is the cross-border gateway rather than mainland Alipay alone — one enablement reaches travellers from well beyond China. [Taking payment from visitors](https://www.uniwebpay.com/guides/accept-payments-from-tourists-singapore/) covers it properly. Magnetic stripe is worth keeping for the same reason: some cards an overseas guest is carrying still require it, and the failure lands at the worst possible moment. With Uniweb Pay those sit on the same merchant account and the same device as Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Diners Club, Discover, Apple Pay, Google Pay and Dynamic PayNow — one payout, one statement. ## The deposit question, answered honestly Pre-authorisation and incidental holds — placing a hold on a guest’s card at check-in and releasing or capturing it at check-out — are a genuine requirement for most properties, and Uniweb Pay does not publish how or whether they work here. That is a gap in what this site can tell you, not a claim in either direction. It is named rather than glossed because it is the single most consequential thing an accommodation provider needs to know before choosing an acquirer, and a page that implied an answer would be misleading exactly the reader who most needs a real one. Ask, and get it in writing, from any provider including this one. Also not published: rates, any approval-time guarantee, chargeback handling specifics, and which third-party property-management systems acceptance can sit behind. That last one is a fair first question for a property already running a PMS. ## Questions merchants ask **Do bookings made through a travel platform come through my card terminal?** No. The platform collects from the guest and remits to you on its own cycle net of its commission, entirely outside your merchant account. Expect to reconcile platform revenue and direct revenue separately — that is the shape of the trade rather than a problem with any provider. **What payment methods should a Singapore hotel accept?** The card schemes plus the wallets your guests arrive with. For a property with international guests that means Alipay+, WeChat Pay and UnionPay alongside Visa, Mastercard, American Express and the phone wallets — ideally on one device, because check-out is a queue at a fixed time of day. **Can I hold a deposit on a guest’s card at check-in?** Uniweb Pay does not publish how or whether pre-authorisation and incidental holds work on its acceptance, so this site cannot answer it either way. It is the most consequential question for a property choosing an acquirer, and it is worth getting the answer in writing before signing with anyone. **How quickly do direct bookings settle?** With Uniweb Pay, in T+1 batches in Singapore dollars, with cards, wallets and Dynamic PayNow all landing in the same payout, each batch and its fees visible in the merchant portal and a daily statement available as PDF. ## Related guides - [Taking payment from visitors to Singapore](https://www.uniwebpay.com/guides/accept-payments-from-tourists-singapore/) - [Taking payment at a Singapore attraction, ticket counter or travel agency](https://www.uniwebpay.com/industries/attractions-and-tourism/) - [Choosing a card terminal](https://www.uniwebpay.com/guides/card-terminal-singapore/) - [Settlement and reconciliation](https://www.uniwebpay.com/guides/settlement-and-reconciliation-singapore/) --- *This is the Markdown mirror of https://www.uniwebpay.com/industries/hotels-and-accommodation/, generated from the same source as the page itself. The whole site in one file: https://www.uniwebpay.com/llms-full.txt · What this company is, for answer engines: https://www.uniwebpay.com/llms.txt*