NL market: IDEAL (Europe, pay attention - WERO is coming!)

When you add the “Mews Alternative Payment Methods” from the marketplace, you can have iDEAL as payment option too.

hi ​@martijnoosterhof  yes that works for non ref rates in the BE and for the payment link… not for your flex booker who wánts to pay now, simply because they want to ;). Anybody using perhaps a zapier automation for this? that could do the trick perhaps? 

This is definitely a growing issue for us as well. We increasingly hear vocal complaints from guests who are frustrated by the lack of iDEAL as a payment option - especially when booking flexible rates.

For many Dutch guests, paying with iDEAL is not just a preference but the norm. Unlike credit cards, iDEAL offers direct payment from their bank account, which feels safer, more familiar, and more trustworthy. It's also worth noting that it's by no means a given that someone owns a credit card in the Netherlands - especially among younger travelers or those who simply prefer not to use one.

We’ve seen cases where guests abandon a direct booking purely because iDEAL isn’t available and instead book through an OTA that does offer this option. It's frustrating, both for them and for us.

Curious to hear how others are tackling this - we’re also looking into alternative solutions, even if it means thinking outside our current tech stack.

What you can do if you have Mews Alternative Payment enabled is the following:

Make a copy of your regular flex rate

Set the payment timing to directly after confirmation (changing the payment timing to directly after confirmation enables iDEAL).

Keep the cancellation policy the same as for the copied flex rate. 

Result: two flex rates in your engine. One which you can pay with credit card when the free cancellation period has ended. The other one pay as you make the reservation. This is what we did and it works very well for us. 

Name it something like Flex- Pay now with iDEAL. 

Yes, it is some work to do if you offer a lot of flexible rates and want to have them all available with iDEAL payment. 

Please let me know if you have any questions about this. Happy to help. 

Side note: If you promote another bookable service in your booking engine, parking for example, and the booker selects this and this service has flexible conditions to pay later iDEAL will not be available for the full reservation.  

​@Daphne Roorda thank you a milion! we will be testing, if need be, i will reach out. 

​@Daphne Roorda , how do you deal with cancellations after the payment has been done? 

Very interested in this conversation, as we experience the same issues. We don't work with Mews BE, but Amadeus BE, same issues.

​@Kirsten what I would suggest is to schedule a daily/weekly reservation report for the cancelled reservations of the rate group with the flexible pay at confirmation conditions. After check these bills and process the refunds manually. 

If anyone knows an easier way I am also interested in learning about that! 

Hey ​@mauritsbots , happy to inform that we are actively working on a new SDK for the payments page which should allow the usage of APMs in a more flexible way. we plan to have a solution for this by end of year. Will reach out soon for more discovery and definitely we can include you in the pilot list. 

hi ​@medina.vultur I will take you on your word this time 😂

Hi ​@medina.vultur,

Please keep me in the loop as well on this development!

Rgds, Kirsten