B4checkin Inc., the company that provides cloud-based software to the hospitality industry, has announced that its payment solution, b4easypost, is now being offered by the American company Agilysys.

Halifax-based b4checkin said this week that b4easypost is now available to users of Lodging Management System, or LMS, Agilysys’ property management system. Alpharetta, Ga.-based Agilysys provides a range of digital services to the hospitality industry around the world.

The announcement is an important one for b4checkin because LMS is recognized as one of the hospitality industry’s leading property management systems. What’s more, B4checkin is now partnered with a much larger company, as Agilysys is listed on the Nasdaq and had revenue in the quarter ended Sept. 30 of US$32.7 million (CAN$42.9 million).

B4checkin is the creator of a suite of cloud-based software that allows hotels to carry out online reservations, check-ins, feedback and other functions. The company began in 2006 when CEO Saar Fabrikant and chief financial officer Martin MacKinnon teamed up to produce a reservation system for hotels overlooked by larger providers.

The company’s b4easypost is an interactive platform that enhances data security, enabling guests and meeting planners to make deposits and payments to hotels and resorts. The solution eliminates credit card authorization forms, which are labor-intensive for businesses, inconvenient for customers, and are not compliant with PCI, a leading international security standard.

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“Our primary goal when developing b4easypost was to protect highly sensitive payment and personal information, as well as reduce the PCI risk for the property,” Fabrikant said in a statement. “This product revolutionizes the end-to-end process of facilitating deposits and payments between hotels and their customers.”

B4checkin has emerged as one of the fast-growing innovation companies in the region. In 2015, Fabrikant said in an interview that his revenues had grown 70 per cent year-on-year. Last year, b4checkin named Peter J. Rogers, Jr., the former executive vice-president of business development and investor relations at MICROS Systems of Columbia, MD, as its chairman, and was named as a finalist in the information technology category for the EY Entrepreneur of the Year Atlantic 2016 awards program.

The company said that b4easypost automates every aspect of a hotel’s operations. These include not only reservations and credit card processing but also accounting and housekeeping, sales and catering, activities scheduling, food and beverage sales, online reservations, remote check-in and spa scheduling.

By facilitating e-commerce transactions online, there is also a cost reduction for hotels, said the statement.

“B4easypost’s integration with Agilysys’ LMS is an extension of the success we’ve had using this product with our Visual One PMS customers,” said Jim Walker, senior vice-president of global revenue at Agilysys. “The combination of PCI compliance and operational efficiency is an increasingly important issue for customers.”

Walker added that Agilysys decided to offer b4easypost to LMS users so “they can benefit from the combined value of our two solutions to reduce costs and improve the payment process.”