The Modern Hotelier #78: Simplifying and Securing Payment Processing & Digital Contracts for Hospitality | with Theresa Ellsworth
===
David Millili [00:00:00]:
Welcome to the Modern Hotelier. We're bringing you interviews with industry experts, thought leaders, and innovators who are shaping the future of hospitality. Whether you're a seasoned hotel professional or just stepping into the industry, our goal is to provide you with insights, knowledge, and trends that will empower you, the modern hotelier.

Steve Carran [00:00:20]:
So we are here with Theresa Ellsworth from Certify. Theresa, thank you for coming on the Modern Hotelier, your podcast here at High-tech.

Theresa Ellsworth [00:00:29]:
We're excited

Steve Carran [00:00:30]:
to have you. So tell us a little bit about yourself. Where did you grow up? What's your what's your background?

Theresa Ellsworth [00:00:35]:
Born and bred in Yonkers, New York. Okay. Went to college upstate SUNY Plattsburgh, did the hospitality program there, which kind of started my hospitality career.

Steve Carran [00:00:47]:
How did growing up in New York shape who you are today?

Theresa Ellsworth [00:00:51]:
Well, I know what good pizza is Right. And other people don't.

Theresa Ellsworth [00:00:53]:
That's a 100% true.

Theresa Ellsworth [00:00:55]:
But I really love the hustle and bustle of New York and I kind of, you know, feel like I can go to any city and know my way around. Right.

Steve Carran [00:01:02]:
Yeah. Love to explore. And I understand you're a bit of a adrenaline junkie. Is that right? A little bit. And what have you done for adrenaline?

Theresa Ellsworth [00:01:10]:
I have been skydiving twice. I I think it's much better the higher up you go. Uh-huh. Absolutely loved it. I loved it. Roller coasters, I love it all.

David Millili [00:01:20]:
So going to school for hospitality, what how did that transform you into getting into technology and then into certified?

Theresa Ellsworth [00:01:25]:
Yeah. It's kind of a good story. Sure. With my program, my hospitality program, as a senior, you get to go to the New York Hospitality Hotel Motel Show at the Javits Center, which is where I met 1 of my mentors, and he was working at the Springer Miller booth. And he said, you know, I know you're in college. We have this internship program. Not internship program. We hire folks right out of college.

Theresa Ellsworth [00:01:50]:
And I said, well, that sounds really interesting. So I applied. I got the job, and that started my career hospitality. I was with Springer Miller for 14 years.

Theresa Ellsworth [00:01:58]:
Wow.

Theresa Ellsworth [00:01:59]:
Yeah. Awesome.

Theresa Ellsworth [00:02:00]:
That's great.

Steve Carran [00:02:01]:
Very cool. So 1 thing I've noticed about your booth is you're talking about accelerating revenue. Could you tell us more about what that means to certify and how you help the hospitality business accelerate revenue?

Theresa Ellsworth [00:02:14]:
Couple things that we do. I think what we're best known for is our digital authorization process. So hotels have this very antiquated process for 3rd party credit card authorization forms, and we're gonna digitize that and secure it for them. So instead of having this reservation and having a chargeback and losing that revenue, we're making sure they're holding on tightly to that revenue. The other thing we do is we digitize their sales process. So their sales contracts, we give them esignatures, and we also take deposits digitally for them, which I'm sure we'll talk about later, but there's a whole lot of savings and revenue that can be found there.

Theresa Ellsworth [00:02:50]:
Yeah. So being an XGM, I know the chargebacks Mhmm. Are big trouble. So can you elaborate and go a little deeper into chargebacks and how they a little bit more specifically are helping the hotels with that?

Theresa Ellsworth [00:03:00]:
Yeah. So our digital authorization solution, we as I said, we're taking this very manual process and we're digitizing it on our secure platform. We're PCI level 1 compliant. So a lot of folks in hotels, GMs, will tell me they have a binder where they keep their credit card numbers. And sometimes they're not even crossed off, unfortunately. And then they have to find somewhere to store them. So it really is this big, funky process that they're having to maintain. Turnover, another huge issue.

Theresa Ellsworth [00:03:31]:
Then you have to train everyone how to do things correctly. So we kinda take all the human error away from it and we digitize and secure the whole thing for hotels.

Steve Carran [00:03:39]:
So fraud prevention. That's another huge topic. How does Certify help with that?

Theresa Ellsworth [00:03:45]:
Part of our digital authorization solution is what we call our advanced fraud tools. We work with a company called Kalt. They'll be here at the show, this week. And we take the guest's data. They enter their credit card information in there, and they analyze it over a 100 different data points and give the hotel a score. So it's not just yes, no, take this card, or don't take this card. It's ABC, like, getting less secure or you really maybe should ask this guest for a different card number.

Theresa Ellsworth [00:04:13]:
You know, so we're looking at AI. It's a big topic.

Theresa Ellsworth [00:04:16]:
Yeah. And it

Theresa Ellsworth [00:04:16]:
was where how are you guys leveraging AI as far as just the fraud chargebacks overall?

Theresa Ellsworth [00:04:21]:
Yeah. I think this is really a differentiator for us. Count is 1 of the few fraud providers that uses supervised and unsupervised machine learning. So when we talk about supervised is we are going back. We're looking at different data points to analyze things like, does this card have charge backs on our network? I mean, think about how powerful that is.

Theresa Ellsworth [00:04:44]:
Yeah.

Theresa Ellsworth [00:04:44]:
Does this person do a lot of returns in this network? And then when we talk about unsupervised, it's looking at things like how many computers has this car person been logged in from? Has this card been used on? How many email addresses does this card have attached to it? So we're looking at both of those things with the help of Kount to give our guests a really powerful fraud score to make the best decision for their business.

Theresa Ellsworth [00:05:08]:
That's right.

Steve Carran [00:05:08]:
I wanna go back to a a point that we talked about a little bit earlier in the conversation, which was recognizing revenue and taking deposits as part of revenue acceleration. How does Certify help hotels with this?

Theresa Ellsworth [00:05:21]:
I think a lot of businesses and people are used to digital signatures. So, of course, we do that at a very, I think, attractive price point, but we go 1 step further and help the property take deposits in real time. You make the signature, and then you immediately take the deposit. We have heard of hotels forgetting to call and ask for the deposit or forgetting to call and ask or the final payment. So we're really, again, removing the human error element of it.

Steve Carran [00:05:50]:
What are

Theresa Ellsworth [00:05:51]:
some of the benefits of the deposits? Taking them, you know, the PMS, the POS component of it. What are some of the additional benefits for the property?

Theresa Ellsworth [00:05:59]:
Right. So what we're finding is a lot of hotels are calling, getting a credit card number, and typing it right into the PMS system. What happens then is they get what's called a downgrade, meaning that their transaction fee on that particular transaction is going up. And if you're talking about a $10, 200, 000 deposit on a wedding, that really adds up for the property. So what we do is we add an ecommerce merchant ID into the equation, which means we know that the guest is the 1 entering in the credit card information securely against our secure portal. And we're processing those payments, so we know we're getting you the best rates possible. And then in addition to that, we're letting those guests, if they want, they can provide the ranking information via ACH. And we have found that that's about a half a percent transaction fee, where these credit cards even a good credit card transaction fee is 3.5%.

Theresa Ellsworth [00:06:50]:
So a lot of savings to be had.

Steve Carran [00:06:52]:
And 1 last question. You know, what are gaps that we're you're seeing in the hospitality industry, and how is Certify filling those gaps?

Theresa Ellsworth [00:06:59]:
Yeah. I we talked about short staffed. I mean, I don't know if you've talked to anyone who is not short staffed. So saving time helping whether it's those digital authorization forms, couple clicks and getting the form off, you don't have to worry about attaching, scanning, printing, all of that. And same thing with the sales process. We found that salespeople were spending, like, up to 2 weeks going back and forth, revising contracts, sending, getting them back Right. Scanning them, all of that, saving in the right place. And we just ruled all of that.

Theresa Ellsworth [00:07:30]:
Like, we want technology to make people's day easier. That's all we wanna do, and we hear that feedback every trade show we go to. We really can't ask for anything more.

Steve Carran [00:07:40]:
That's awesome. So we're at High-tech. Are you guys unveiling anything here? What are we what are we showing all the great people that are stopping by?

Theresa Ellsworth [00:07:47]:
Yeah. So we are talking about ACH. Like I said, rate transaction fees on the ACH. We also just debuted our Opera OHMIP integration, which we know is kind of the talk of the town right now. So we're really proud to show that to everyone.

Steve Carran [00:08:00]:
That's awesome. And giving out headshots too if That's right. If anybody wants to swing by and get a headshot. Well, this was great. We appreciate you taking time out of your busy high-tech and chatting with us, but thank you for joining us. Yeah.

Theresa Ellsworth [00:08:11]:
Thank you, Bill.

Theresa Ellsworth [00:08:11]:
Thank you so much. It was great. Thank you.

Steve Carran [00:08:15]:
You made it to the end

Speaker E [00:08:16]:
of the Modern Hotelier. Thanks for listening. The Modern Hotelier is produced by Make More Media. Make sure to like and subscribe if you're listening on YouTube or subscribe wherever you get your podcast. If you know a guest or sponsor that would be a good fit, feel free to email us at hello at the modern Hotelier. If you'd like to get some Modern Hotelier merch, click the merch button on modernhotelier.com or click the link below. Thanks and have a great day.