Payments by Booking.com or paying at your B&B: which to choose, and what it costs

Short answer: with Payments by Booking.com the guest pays through Booking.com, with the payment method they prefer. Booking.com sends you the money after check-out, by bank transfer or by virtual credit card (VCC), depending on your country and your settings. Without the service the guest pays at your property: you collect the money yourself and pay the commission to Booking.com yourself at the end of each month. Which one suits you depends on how much collecting you want to do, how you handle no-shows and what the payment fee costs in your country.

Below you can read what happens in each case, what it costs and how to keep both straight in your books. How it works comes from the help pages Booking.com publishes for its partners. Menu names may have changed slightly since.

How does Payments by Booking.com work?

The guest pays online through Booking.com. For bookings that are not prepaid, Booking.com validates the guest's card for you and collects any cancellation or no-show fee you are owed. After check-out Booking.com pays you, in one of two ways:

• Bank transfer to your account.
• Virtual credit card (VCC): a card number per booking that you charge yourself through your card terminal or payment provider. How that works, and where it goes wrong, is in the Booking.com virtual credit card.

You join in the extranet under Finance. If you see Payments by Booking.com there, you can sign up and, if asked, choose between bank transfer and VCC. If you see Finance help instead, you have already joined. If you see neither, the service is not (yet) available for your property or region.

What does it cost?

There is no setup fee. What you pay depends on how you are paid out:

• By bank transfer, Booking.com charges a payment service fee: a percentage of the total value of every completed reservation. The percentage depends on the country of your property. You can see it in the extranet under Finance. We deliberately give no figure here: it differs by country and can change.
• By VCC, you pay no fee to Booking.com, but you do pay the transaction cost of your own bank or payment provider when you charge the card.

Booking.com only charges that fee on completed stays. If you waive a guest's cancellation fee, you pay no payment fee on it either.

That payment fee comes on top of the commission. What Booking.com charges in commission is in how much commission Booking.com charges.

And if the guest pays at the property?

If you do not use the service, or switch it off, everything is up to you:

• You collect every payment yourself, on arrival, on departure or with a payment link.
• You pay the commission yourself at the end of each month, based on the commission invoice. How to check it is in checking your Booking.com commission invoice.
• A guest who does not show up is yours to charge, with the card details you received through Booking.com.

You switch it off in the extranet under Finance → Finance settings → Payments by Booking.com status.

No-shows, cancellations and refunds

This is where the biggest practical difference lies.

• With Payments by Booking.com you mark a no-show or late cancellation in the extranet or in the Pulse app. For bookings that are not prepaid, Booking.com tries to collect the fee from the guest. If that works, you receive it through your normal payout. If it fails, the commission on that booking is waived. Refunds of online payments go from Booking.com to the guest, and Booking.com handles disputed payments (chargebacks).
• With a VCC, a refund has to be made within 60 days of the check-in date. After that Booking.com starts a chargeback itself to return the money to the guest.
• At the property, a no-show is entirely your business: charging the card and following up a decline.

Mind the window: according to Booking.com you can only mark a no-show from midnight on the check-in date until 48 hours after the scheduled check-out date.

What suits a B&B?

There is no right answer for everyone. A few rules of thumb from practice:

• Little time to chase payments? Payments by Booking.com takes over collecting, no-shows and chargebacks. You pay a fee for that, or the cost of your own terminal.
• Guests who like to pay on site, and a smooth till? Paying at the property keeps the fee away, but collecting and the monthly commission are your work.
• Choosing VCC? You can switch from VCC to bank transfer, but according to Booking.com not back again. The switch takes about five days.

Work it out on your own figures: the payment fee times your yearly revenue through Booking.com, against the time you now spend collecting, chasing and handling no-shows.

How BedFlow PMS keeps the two apart

The risk of two systems side by side: a guest who already paid Booking.com gets a payment link from you as well. In BedFlow PMS you therefore set per channel and per property who collects the payment (Settings → Integrations → Channels → Booking.com → Settings → Commission section):

• Channel collects payment on: the guest gets no payment request or reminder. The booking window shows the label Paid via Booking.com. When the payout arrives, you record it on the invoice with the payment method OTA payout (Booking.com, …), so the balance is zero.
• Switch off: the booking comes in confirmed and you settle on arrival, on departure or with a payment link whenever you like.

Everything is in the guide who collects the payment? Payment handling per channel.

Want to see what that looks like for your rooms? Check the pricing or try BedFlow PMS free for 30 days at bedflow.eu, no credit card needed.