Platform launches hotel PC-POS, announces Interswitch as launch partner

Hotels across Nigeria are set to enjoy a reprieve from some of the accounting and reconciliation challenges they face with the roll out of a new 'Personal Computer-Point of Sale’ (PC-POS) feature on SlimTrader’s ‘MoBiashara for Hotels’ (MFH) platform.

Many hotels across Nigeria are faced with the challenge of accurately consolidating payments made on their hotel Point of Sale (POS) terminals with hotel records and room inventory; resorting instead to manual reconciliation. With SlimTrader’s new PC-POS solution; all POS terminals and PCs within a hotel can be networked.

This was revealed in the official announcement of the launch of the solution by SlimTrader, Sub-Sahara Africa’s leading turn-key ecommerce solution provider for businesses, on the 22nd of February, 2016. It was disclosed that as the launch partner for the solution, Interswitch has adapted its POS terminals to work seamlessly with the solution.

The new feature allows hotels to link their hotel computers to POS terminals, such that hotel room payments are immediately reflected in the hotel’s computer and online records. When hotels which are subscribed to SlimTrader’s MFH solution generate reservations on their hotel PCs, the transaction is sent to the hotels POS terminals for the customer to effect payment.

Once this is done, the records are automatically reconciled, thereby enabling hotels to manage their inventory more efficiently.

Reservations can be made in both local and international currencies; and then paid for with local or international cards. The system also allows for payment flexibility, accepting cash and payment via other platforms.

With this iteration to the platform, ‘MoBiashara for Hotels (MFH)’ is now positioned to be the ‘one stop solution’ with which hotels get all their Personal Computers networked with their Point of Sale terminals; with a Property Management System (PMS) to manage check-ins, check-outs and general hotel inventory. In addition, the hotels have access to a channel manager that integrates with online travel agencies (OTAs) such as hotelnownow.com or TripAdvisor and so on.

Speaking on the decision to develop this new feature, CEO of SlimTrader, Mr. Femi Akinde said, “At SlimTrader, our vision is ‘To facilitate effortless transactions for businesses across Sub-Sahara Africa’. In working with hotels, we discovered that they face significant challenges in tying reservations to offline payments. SlimTrader gladly took on this challenge and we are pleased that today we can launch this much needed solution for the hotel industry in Nigeria, tying multiple payment terminals to their physical and online reservations. Over the next few weeks, the solution will be scaled to work with terminals from all POS terminal providers in Nigeria.”

Remarking on the partnership with SlimTrader for this solution, the Divisional CEO, Switching and Processing at Interswitch, Mr. Akeem Lawal said, “In our position as Africa's leading integrated payment and transaction processing company, we are always seeking new ways to help improve business efficiency with our funds monitoring, payments collection and fraud management solutions. This partnership with SlimTrader is one of the ways we are bringing our company vision to life”. It was revealed that Interswitch developed customized software for the POS terminals to integrate with the PC-POS feature, Interswitch will also provide free POS terminals to hotels that sign up for the premium service.

In the light of the prevailing economic situation, organizations are looking to more efficient ways of managing their businesses at reduced cost; SlimTrader’s MoBiashara platform is looking to help address these needs for many businesses across Sub-Saharan Africa.