Posts

Streamlining identity verification & payment processing in hospitality 

Valid8 provides key add-on services to software vendors in the hospitality and short-term home rental markets, particularly as their customers are moving rapidly towards touchless processes and greater digital interaction.

Valid8’s customers are generally established providers of customer interaction software, particularly associated with the verification of customers, pre-auth and post-stay payments, as well as the issuance of digital or physical keys.

 

The need for a better solution

Customers utilising short-term accommodation were previously required to prove their identity and provide a pre-auth payment which would often be held for days after checkout. This provided a poor customer experience, particularly when customers had travelled a long distance and just wanted to get to their room. 

On the other hand, administration time and costs for facility owners were generally high, particularly in instances where poor security led to a data breach.  

This has been highlighted with major corporations such as Hilton, MGM Resorts & Hyatt collectively losing over 500 million highly sensitive customer records, resulting in actual or potential fines of tens of millions. 

 

Considerations when deciding to use Latpay + Nuggets

The solution had to seamlessly integrate the identity verification process with payments, plus the ability to ensure total data security for guests without a major change in the operations. 

Further to this, these functions needed to be fully integrated into the existing customer interaction software that direct customers provide to venues, enabling touchless key issue, menu ordering, service bookings and payment without the need to download multiple apps. 

 

The Latpay + Nuggets solution

Latpay & Nuggets incorporated into Valid8’s hospitality service, enhancing the underlying software and fully integrating with the venue’s existing platform, ultimately creating a seamless customer experience. The existing tight integration between Latpay and Nuggets was key to this ability.

Features utilised by the client: 

  • Secure Identity Document, personal details and credit/debit card storage with consent-based access
  • Customer ID verification
  • Face recognition
  • Tokenised Credit Card(s) linked to guest account
  • Card Pre-auth
  • Mobile and EFTPOS/MPOS payments (Front Desk/Restaurant/Bar/Poolside etc.)
  • Fast-Checkout payment finalisation from App

 

Major benefits from using Nuggets + Latpay 

  • Reduced staff needed at Front Desk
  • Reduces payment processing costs (particularly for International credit cards)
  • Faster processing of key allocation or enables physical or digital key self-service
  • Remove transfer of documents/cards between parties – no-touch processing
  • Faster and better customer experience where customers want self-service
  • The customer only needs to undertake ID/account setup process once (not every check-in)
  • Easier accommodation of multi-lingual needs for ID, payment and check-in processes.
  • Reduces card and payment fraud risk
  • Removes ID and guest data breach risks
  • Increased comfort and surely for guests on ID and payment theft risks
  • Removes use of insecure/forgettable/cumbersome username/passwords
  • Compliance with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Second Payment Services Directive (PSD2), Federal Trade Commission Act (FTC Act) and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)
  • Simplifies car park entrance access pre-check-in (no need to issue passes)
  • Enables contactless venue/room delivery via third parties
  • Secures bags and vehicles (only verified access to guest assets)
  • Trust-based history enables removal of pre-auth requirements
  • Facilitates increased revenue opportunities by enabling third-party service provider payments with simplified revenue splits

Interested in seeing what Latpay & Nuggets can do for your business? Find out more about our ID and payment platform using biometrics and blockchain technology.

Blockchain-biometrics

Payment and identity verification with blockchain & biometrics

How does your business manage customer data and identification? 

As one of the most secure methods of data protection available, blockchain technology has quickly become the industry standard for securely accessing customer information and ensuring it never falls into the wrong hands. 

Harnessing this best-of-breed encryption technology, our partners at Nuggets have developed an innovative platform that combines blockchain with biometric authentication to deliver the first-ever identity and payment app to the Australian market. 

 

Nuggets: Leading the way in data security

Nuggets is a secure payment security and ID verification platform designed to streamline business processes and deliver exceptional data security to customers. Using industry-leading blockchain and biometric technology, Nuggets helps businesses to protect customer data while offering simplified validation and payment processes for businesses. 

Latpay + Nuggets

Latpay has teamed up with Nuggets to offer a complete solution to payment security. Utilising our PCI DSS compliant merchant facility and payment gateway, we can now offer businesses a simple and highly-secure option for ID verification and payment processing, both online and in person. 

How it works:

Nuggets stores customer data securely using blockchain technology. This essentially means that the data is encrypted and dispersed in chunks to be stored across a range of sources, and is only accessible by the customer themselves. Not even Nuggets can access it.

When a business requests ID verification, customers only share enough of the data stored to complete the verification or transaction. This means that businesses never need to store personal or sensitive data about their customers. 

Benefits of using Nuggets:

Developed with both businesses and consumers in mind, Nuggets delivers a wide range of benefits that ensure the security of all users while streamlining processes and improving customer experiences. 

 

Business Benefits:

Fraud mitigation 

Combining blockchain and biometric technology, Nuggets helps to mitigate the risks of identity fraud with a highly secure platform that puts data security back in the hands of the customer.

Compliance assurance

Minimise the hassles of regulatory compliance with a payment and identity verification system that boast compliance to the major governing bodies, including Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Second Payment Services Directive (PSD2).

Streamlined processes

Spend less time processing your customers with the ability to validate identification and verify payment methods in just seconds. Just send a request to your customer’s mobile and have complete confidence in the data provided – no second-guessing.  

No data, no breaches

Recent statistics show that around $527.8 million was lost over the previous financial year to card fraud in Australia, while the annual economic impact of identity fraud sits at around $2 billion. Mitigate the risks of a data breach and protect your business reputation by never storing customer data. If there’s no data, there’s no data to be breached. 

Secure payment processing 

Deploying Latpay’s secure payment technology, Nuggets delivers complete payment security using whichever payment method your customers prefer.

 

Consumer Benefits:

Protect your personal data

With none of their personal data collected or stored by your business, customers can feel confident in the protection of their personal data and therefore more comfortable doing business with you. 

Streamline identity verification

Customers can spend less time proving they are who they say they are with a pre-validated method of identification. A

Make payments simple

Using pre-loaded and pre-verified payment methods, customers can make payments in a few simple steps from their Nuggets app with the knowledge that their payment data will remain secure. 

No more passwords

With the capability to sign in via fingerprint scan or facial recognition, using Nuggets removes the need for pesky passwords. As well as sidestepping yet another password to remember, this also means reduced risk of phishing, malware or hijacking of phone accounts. 

 

Using Nuggets

Using the Nuggets platform for payment and identity verification is incredibly simple for both businesses and consumers, and can be completed in just 3 quick steps:

Step 1: Biometric single sign-on

Using either a desktop or mobile device, businesses and consumers can log in in seconds using biometric data saved to their account. This means no usernames or passwords required.

Step 2: Swift ID verification

The business then ‘pings’ a request to the customers’ device, requesting access to specific information. Once the customer receives the request, they can either approve or deny access for the business. Once approved, the verification process takes just seconds. 

Step 3: Secure payments

If taking payments, the business can then offer the most popular payment methods for their customers to pay directly through the Nuggets app. This includes credit or debit cards and even cryptocurrency. 

It’s that simple.

 

Ready to step into the future of business? Learn more about how Nuggets and Latpay can help you to reduce risk, increase revenue and streamline customer verification here.