Hotels have elaborate systems to capture lodging fees and other purchases charged to rooms but when customers book special events such as weddings or conferences payment security can be more of a problem The practice for accepting deposits for non-lodging purchases at many hotels typically involves painstakingly filling out paper forms and collecting of credit card numbers insecurely via phone or fax said Eric Liebman Elavons vice president and head of product strategy for restaurants and hospitality Its not just incredibly risky for hotels to manually handle and store card numbers for sales reservations and sales over the phone but its time-consuming and costly said Liebman who observed these processes firsthand during almost 30 years working in the hotel industry before joining the payments industry five years ago He worked first at Ingenico and moved to Elavon in 2015 Eric Liebman Elavons vice president and head of product strategy for restaurants and hospitality Meeting organizers and hosts spend about 50 billion annually in the US for food and beverage services according to the Events Industry Council Weddings in the US account for about 55 billion annually and food beverage and venue rental fees consume up to 60 of most wedding budgets Elavon recently developed a solution to resolve these concerns in hotels non-lodging purchases The Converge Hospitality tool enables hotel employees to set up reservations and purchases for any non-lodging items with details stored in a digital invoice Customers receive an email with a link enabling them to add payment details to the invoice where its stored securely via an Elavon-hosted payment page When people book a special event like a wedding there are usually a lot of changes in the head count and requirements and instead of updating a file with a lot of paper the hotel can make those changes instantly in the digital invoice and collect payments all at once or through installments Liebman said So far Converge is being marketed to large hotel chains and small independent inns he said Elavon is keeping Converge anchored to email as the primary notification channel at first but its exploring adding SMS text notifications later if its suitable for some users The solution grew out of an existing service Elavons parent US Bank offers for corporate billing and invoicing and adapted it to the hotel industry Pricing is tiered based on the size of the hotel Unlike many payment systems that require deep integration with hotels existing reservation and payments system Converge is a lighter approach that rides in the cloud accessible to any users via sign-on Because of the diversity of approaches different hotels use to book events we based Converge on a platform available from any browser so hotels and customers can access it from a phone tablet or a laptop Liebman said During the beta testing phase currently underway hotels are reporting increased convenience for handling payment for special events as well as gifts sent to hotel guests rooms by non-guests and shipping costs for guests items recovered in lost-and-found departments Liebman said An unexpected use case Liebman said has emerged is hotels that have heavy seasonal demand from snowbirds escaping winter for instance and take deposits in advance Elavon plans to roll it out broadly early next year Liebman said