Payments & Billing

StaYantra processes guest payments through a set of payment providers, and each hotel offers the providers that fit its country and its guests — local wallets where they exist, card payments everywhere.

The guest checkout flow for a Nepal hotel — guests choose between the hotel's enabled payment options directly in the booking wizard.

1. Payment Providers Per Hotel

Which payment options a guest sees at checkout depends on the hotel:

• Hotels in Nepal offer, by default: eSewa (mobile wallet, server-to-server signature verification), Khalti (wallet payment with OTP or in-app confirmation), and Stripe (international credit cards on a hosted checkout page).
• Hotels everywhere else currently offer Stripe card payments.
• A hotel can also have an explicit provider configuration (which providers are enabled, and in what order they appear at checkout) that overrides the country default.

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2. Base Currency & Exchange Rates

Every hotel has a base currency — the currency its rates, folios, and reports are kept in. NPR is the default, and hotels can be configured with a different base currency.

A payment is charged in the currency the chosen provider settles in — eSewa and Khalti settle in NPR, Stripe in USD:

• Same currency: When the provider's settlement currency matches the hotel's base currency (e.g. an NPR hotel taking an eSewa payment), the guest is charged exactly the folio amount. No conversion happens.
• Different currency: When they differ (e.g. an NPR hotel taking a Stripe card payment in USD), the charge amount is converted at charge time using the platform's cached exchange rate, which is refreshed on a schedule and includes a small platform spread.
• Rate snapshots: Every converted charge records the exact rate used and when it was captured, alongside both the base-currency amount and the charged amount — so the folio and reconciliation always show precisely what conversion applied to that payment.

[!NOTE] Exchange rates fail closed: if the cached rate for a currency pair is missing or more than 24 hours old, checkout in that currency is temporarily unavailable until the rate refreshes, rather than charging a guest on a stale rate.

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3. Processing Refunds

If a booking is cancelled and a refund is due:

1. Open the guest's Folio.
2. Click Issue Refund.
3. Select the original payment transaction.
4. Specify the refund amount (full or partial).
5. Gateway Rules:
   • Stripe: Refund is processed automatically back to the guest's credit card.
   • eSewa / Khalti: These wallet gateways require manual approval or a callback verification. The system will mark the refund as "Pending Dispatch" and notify the finance manager to release the wallet funds via the dashboard.

[!NOTE] If a refund amount is above your hotel's configured approval limit, it won't be released immediately — it's held for a manager or owner to approve first, the same way large discounts are.