FreedomPay and WorldPay Expand Integrated Payments Partnership

Payments platform FreedomPay expanded its collaboration with merchant acquirer Worldpay.

The extended partnership will provide “integrated payments and omnichannel technology” for businesses in industries like retail and hospitality, according to a Wednesday (Sept. 20) press release.

The updated collaboration will happen in a phased rollout to eventually cover the North American, Asia-Pacific (APAC) and European, Middle Eastern and North African (EMEA) markets, “enabling Worldpay’s global customers to benefit from improved payments technology across a number of consumer touchpoints.”

The hospitality sector is seeing a resurgence in revenues following several years of losses, according to the PYMNTS report “Tap and Tip: Travel and Hospitality Embrace Digital and Instant Payments.”

“To embrace this growing influx of travelers and enhance their experiences, travel and hospitality establishments are looking to shed their legacy-payments past and embrace digital and instant payments to streamline everyday travel transactions, refunds, tipping and payroll,” the report said.

Some hotels have entered real-time payments partnerships to streamline guest experiences. For example, short-term vacation rental and hotel management group Stay Hospitality announced in July it is working with Mews Payments to transform its manual payment processes into seamless experiences for its guests. Elsewhere, global travel technology company Oyo joined forces with financial platform Stripe to offer its hotels real-time payouts.

Earlier this year, FreedomPay announced it would integrate Visa’s network tokenization capabilities with its global identity and tokenization framework.

This integration allows network tokens across card brands, which can allow merchants to stay in compliance with data and privacy regulations, as well as qualify for lower interchange rates for some transactions.

“By partnering with Visa for network tokenization, FreedomPay will provide merchants with more flexibility and geographic coverage, including in harder-to-access regions, when managing customer and card data,” FreedomPay Chief Technology Officer David Knowlton said at the time.

The new omnichannel global tokenization product resulting from this partnership will also provide customers with a seamless experience across borders and merchant locations. Merchants will be able to offer their customers a more personalized checkout experience, loyalty and incentives.