Hotels now have access to a seamless, end-to-end payment experience that follows the guest from booking through to checkout. Already live across the Red Carnation Hotel Collection’s South African portfolio – including the Oyster Box, Bushman’s Kloof Reserve & Wellness Retreat and The Twelve Apostles Hotel & Spa – it marks a significant step forward for a sector where manual processes and fragmented payment workflows have long been the norm.
“For hotel groups, the ability to scale a single, consistent payment solution across a portfolio is significant,” says Jonathan Smit, one of South Africa’s most accomplished fintech entrepreneurs and executive chairman of iVeri, a payment technology provider certified with Oracle Opera Cloud.
“Whether a group is running two properties or twenty, across one country or several, the integration delivers the same guest experience and operational efficiency at every property – no fragmented systems, no managing multiple providers across different territories. Just one solution, wherever the portfolio sits,” says Smit.
The integration removes manual data re-entry between Opera and standalone payment terminals, reducing billing disputes and reconciliation delays. Virtual cards from platforms like Booking.com and Expedia are captured directly, while guest cards are tokenised at check-in to allow automatic mid-stay billing and seamless checkout. By ensuring every transaction is industry-compliant, operators are charged the accurate banking fees and avoid the hidden costs often triggered by competing products.
“The integration has changed the way our teams work,” says Michael Nel, Managing Director of Red Carnation Hotels South Africa. “Service has always been at the heart of everything we do, by removing this administrative burden at the end of a guest’s stay, our teams are freed to focus on what truly matters – delivering a warm, personal experience that creates a home away from home feel. When guests look back, we want them to remember the people, the care and the setting – not the process of settling the bill.”
That seamlessness is built on solid technical foundations. iVeri holds direct certification with the Oracle Payments Interface (OPI) – a distinction held by only a handful of payment providers globally – enabling a direct, uninterrupted connection between Opera and the payment terminal. When a card is tapped at reception, the instruction flows from Opera, processes through iVeri, and confirms back in real time, with no third-party system to introduce delays or errors. It is what makes a consistent payment experience deliverable across every property, in every market.
“The Oracle Opera integration is phase one,” says Smit. “Phase two – connecting with Oracle MICROS Simphony across restaurants, quick-service outlets and retail environments – is already underway. We are systematically extending the same payment experience across the full Oracle ecosystem, and the ambition doesn’t stop there. iVeri’s goal is to become the payments partner of choice for Oracle customers on the continent.”