1. Requirements Collection & Business Analysis Phase

To thoroughly understand and optimize the payment processing landscape, our business analysts conducted a discovery sessions with key stakeholders across multiple departments. These sessions included process mapping workshops to document existing commission collection workflows for various hotel categories and booking channels, financial data analysis to quantify the business impact of payment timelines, commission rates, and outstanding payments, structured interviews with Finance, Operations, Hotel Solutions, and Legal teams, detailed customer journey mapping for diverse booking scenarios (prepaid rates, flexible rates, meeting & group bookings), and a comprehensive regulatory compliance assessment evaluating PCI DSS, PSD2, and other relevant financial regulations.

2. Technical Architecture & System Design

To enable the Paywall approach, we designed a comprehensive technical architecture based on the requirements analysis. This included a scalable Commission Rule Engine for real-time commission rate retrieval and calculation, a mirrored ERP system for high transaction volumes, performance-optimizing caching mechanisms, and SOAP web services interfaces for cross-system communication. For Payment Processing Integration, we designed integrations with payment service providers, created a dual VCC management system (primary for hotel payment, secondary for commission allocation), implemented a tokenization system for secure card handling, and built PCI-compliant interfaces for credit card information exchange. Booking System Modifications involved enhancing the booking engine to flag Paywall transactions, modifying internal inventory management systems for new payment instructions, updating Card Delivery Systems for VCC distribution, and redesigning the Reservation Info Push Service for connected hotels. Financial Systems Integration comprised automated commission invoice generation, reconciliation processes between payment providers and ERP systems, ERP flags to prevent duplicate commission requests, and accounting interfaces for financial reporting. The Integration Architecture utilized a microservices architecture with REST APIs for new components, SOAP interfaces for legacy system integration, event-driven architecture for booking status updates, and real-time and batch processing based on system requirements.

3. UI/UX Design & Implementation

To optimize user experience and streamline payment processes, we implemented a comprehensive UI/UX design and implementation strategy. This included redesigning customer-facing booking flows to improve conversion through optimized payment capture screens, clear communication about payment timing and guarantees, a simplified 3DS verification flow, responsive designs for mobile and desktop users, and intelligent error handling for payment failures. For hotel partners, we designed new payment instruction displays, created commission transparency tools, implemented invoice management interfaces, and developed payment status dashboards. Internally, we built comprehensive monitoring tools for payment processes, created exception handling interfaces, designed reconciliation workflows, and implemented reporting visualizations. Our UX design process was grounded in user research with corporate bookers and hotel finance teams, wireframing and prototyping of payment flows, usability testing to optimize conversion rates, and A/B testing of payment messaging.

4. Development & Implementation

Our development and implementation strategy was executed in a phased approach, leveraging a specialized team and focusing on incremental integration across multiple distribution channels. The team was comprised of Product Owners with financial services expertise, Business Analysts skilled in process optimization, Data Scientists with AI capabilities for payment pattern analysis, UX Researchers and Designers specializing in financial interfaces, Full-stack Developers experienced in payment integration, QA Engineers focused on financial systems, and DevOps Engineers for CI/CD pipeline management. Phase I centered on implementing commission calculation for complex multi-day bookings, post-event invoice reconciliation, and integration with a meeting booking platform for the first distribution channel. Phase II extended the system to a second distribution channel, incorporating high-volume payment processing, integration with multiple booking channels, and enhanced messaging systems. Phase III completed the integration with a third distribution channel, featuring corporate booking tool integration, policy compliance features, and reporting for corporate clients.

5. Testing & Validation

To ensure the system's reliability and security, we implemented a comprehensive testing strategy encompassing unit and integration tests, performance evaluations, and security protocols. This included automated test suites for all microservices, API contract testing, database integrity validation, load testing to simulate peak booking periods, stress testing of the commission calculation engine, response time optimization, PCI DSS compliance validation, penetration testing of payment interfaces, and data encryption verification.