Asia-Pacific has grown into the world's largest market for cashless transactions. Find out what are the top APMs here.
The hospitality industry has witnessed a massive shift in the way customers pay for their food and drink. Within a decade, we have witnessed payment methods shift rapidly from cash to credit cards, tap-and-go and also digital eWallets. But how about the real-world impact of this shift in payment methods, how has the behaviour of the customer changed and what does the future hold for hospitality payments? Here, we discuss how payments are evolving, the benefits of the hospitality business and its impact on the industry.
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About GoZayaan
GoZayaan is a Bangladesh-based online travel agency that was founded in 2017 with the goal of revolutionizing travel in Bangladesh. In November 2022, the company launched a new product called Hometown, which was designed to help Bangladeshi migrant workers living in Singapore book flights to and from their home country with ease and full control.
One of the main problems faced by these migrant workers is the lack of visibility into the prices of flights they want to book, as well as language barriers that can make it difficult to communicate with third-party travel agents. This often leads to higher prices and a lack of control over their flight bookings.
Hometown aims to address these issues by taking a holistic approach to travel booking and payment for migrant workers. The company hopes to empower these workers to have more control over their travel plans, as well as their finances.
Booking flights online is not a common practice among the Bangladeshi migrant worker community due to a lack of digital education, a preference for services with a more personal touch, and concerns about scams and fraud. However, GoZayaan hopes that Hometown will be able to overcome these barriers and make it easier for these workers to book flights home to see their families.
Payment Challenges Faced by Hometown - GoZayaan
The first challenge GoZayaan faced was that migrant workers in Singapore were accustomed to making their payments offline. Research along with direct interviews with the workers shows that most of them preferred PayNow, a feature of the Hometown app. With that in mind, GoZayaan decided to integrate XanPay, which would allow them to also use bank transfers and PayNow within their app.
However, after integrating PayNow into their app via XanPay, they realized that many of the workers are used to scanning a QR code rather than taking a screenshot. Luckily, this issue was quickly resolved with Hometown's brilliant approach of creating a step-by-step guided tutorial for purchasing tickets; from choosing flights to completing payment.
To read the full case study, download it here.
Enter XanPay: Simplifying Payments
By implementing XanPay, GoZayaan has helped to make the purpose of their use case for payments a reality. They've made it possible for customers to scan the QR code and make payment via PayNow. XanPay has allowed GoZayaan and Project Hometown to easily open up into other regional markets without having to find a new payment partner.
How XanPay helped Project Hometown in Leveraging Alternative Payment Methods
By using XanPay, both consumers and merchants have transparency in seeing the transaction being made. It is so well received that the project hometown has to increase the transaction charge to 100k. Project hometown is no longer a project but a movement for them in helping the migrant workers. Flight booking is a start for them, but in 2023, they are going to release many more products to help the migrant workers. They have also received many messages of appreciation from the workers saying how grateful they are for having a project just for them. With the help of XanPay, Project Hometown was able to leverage alternative payment methods.
Why XanPay?
Project Hometown wanted the payments to be transferable. They could go with Apple Pay and Google Pay, but those were not the kind of payments that their workers used. They only knew that their workers knew how to use PayNow, but not within an app, so they provided video tutorials. Now they currently have PayNow and bank transfer; they are looking into debit card payments in the future.
“We had a very good experience with XanPay so far. GoZayaan has some major product plans launching in 2023 and they will consider using XanPay as well. XanPay team has a great onboarding team/service and they are very responsive.”
- Team GoZayaan
Learn how XanPay streamlines the Travel and Hospitality payments. 
Asia-Pacific has grown into the world's largest market for cashless transactions. Find out what are the top APMs here.
Asia-Pacific has grown into the world's largest market for cashless transactions. Find out what are the top APMs here.