Homestays - Credit Cards

[backtofront]

How does one receive international payments from credit cards or electronic transfers at a homestay no one has yet stayed at?  Can one receive funds via Paypal? The cheapest way of setting up a card processing service?

[Rob13]

2 minutes ago, backtofront said:

 Can one receive funds via Paypal?

 

 

If both parties have a PP account.

[backtofront]

Can Thai account holders withdraw funds from Paypal? The site doesn't mention that at one time it was not possible. If I am not mistaken Paypal also offers a service where customers can process funds from their card, to ones account even if they don't have a Paypal account themselves.  

[Crossy]

Actually only the receiver needs a PP account, the whole point of PP when it started was to enable "ordinary Joe" to receive credit card payments.

 

One can withdraw funds to a Thai bank account provided you have a Thailand based PP account linked to your Thai bank.

[backtofront]

Thanks. Making a bit of progress. But had to delete the first one I set up as the profile name must be the same as the bank account name. Common sense, except Paypal does not understand that the wife uses different names for different situations. Am hoping that the English spelling of her formal name works in that event of an unexpected transfer.

 

Would hate to have to step her through the set up of the account.

[mike324]

set up your homestay on Airbnb is the easiest and redirect customers there to finalize booking, unless you are able to implement a merchant system on your own website,.

[backtofront]

Have AirB&B. But get most of our enquiries from Booking.com. They don't take payments. We also get most no shows from Booking.com and want to filter by requesting card details. Have approached Kasikorn. They charge 400 - 500 baht a month for terminal for small businesses. The first six months are free and commissions from 1.5% to 2.5% 

Edited January 10, 2017 by backtofront

[Crossy]

Don't forget that you need to be able to make "card not present" transactions if you intend taking a booking deposit / charging a no-show fee.

 

It's been a while since I had to deal with credit card transactions but you likely cannot do this with the terminal as supplied by default, you need to get your bank to enable the facility.

 

Of course, simply asking your potential client for their card details may well be sufficient to encourage them to turn up :)