In the Mews Booking Engine, guests can pay for reservations during the booking process rather than through payment requests. Reservations made via the Mews Booking Engine are eligible for payment during the booking process only if they meet the following criteria:
 

• Have only automatic rates with settlement triggers in the past, or
• Have the "On confirmation" settlement trigger without any settlement offset value

• If you don’t choose the "Cancellation offset" time in the booking engine configuration, Mews has this set to 15 minutes by default. 
• Mews also creates an optional reservation when guests book their reservations through “Alternative payment methods”, for example, iDEAL.  

In this article, you can learn about the following in relation to the Mews Booking Engine: 

• The payment flow
  • Alternative payment methods
    • Payment card input configuration

The payment flow  

1. When guests confirm a reservation, the Mews Booking Engine directs guests to the secure payment gateway where they can choose to pay with their preferred payment method.

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2. Following successful payment and authentication, the system directs guests right back to the Mews Booking Engine. 

Alternative payment methods  

The Mews Booking Engine supports various alternative payment methods besides card payment, such as:

• iDEAL: When you implement iDEAL payments, your guests receive a booking confirmation after receipt of payment. Mews holds the reservation as “optional” until payment is complete and confirms reservations only after receiving the payment.  
• Apple pay and Google Pay: These digital wallets allow android and iOS users to pay for reservations without having to input their credit card details.
• SEPA Direct Debit: SEPA stands for Single Euro Payments Area, and it is a Direct Debit payment method based on a bank transfer between banks within the European area. When you implement SEPA payments, Mews sends a confirmation email to both the property and the customer, informing them that the customer submitted the payment details successfully. Mews sends another notification when payment is confirmed.

• You can only offer SEPA Direct Debit payments if the booking date is 15 or more days prior to the reservation start date.
• The alternative payment methods above are only available via Mews Hosted Payment Checkouts or Payment Requests. 

Payment card input configuration 

For accepting alternative payment methods iDEAL, Apple pay and Google Pay and SEPA Direct Debit in the Mews Booking Engine, with the Settlement trigger set to “On confirmation” and without any settlement offset value and choose either:  

• Not required for fully or partially paid bookings or 
• Not required for fully paid bookings 

for the Payment card input option when setting up your Mews Booking Engine. 

Note: You can still offer payment through iDEAL and SEPA Direct Debit when you choose "Always required" in your Payment card input option. Though guests need to input their card details initially, they can choose to pay by iDEAL instead, when Mews directs them to the payment flow.  
 

You can learn more about iDEAL payment flow here, SEPA Direct Debit here and Apple Pay and Google Pay here.