Challenge

Staycity Group was founded in Dublin in 2004 to offer travelers the home comforts of an apartment with the personalized service of a hotel. The perfect blend of independence and hospitality, its aparthotels include amenities such as fully equipped kitchens in every apartment, on-site laundry services, fitness rooms, and cafés.

Staycity wanted to provide guests with flexible payment options, but its multichannel booking process made for a fragmented experience. A guest might book through Staycity’s website or over the phone, pay for breakfast using the Tevalis point-of-sale system, then settle their bill at the front desk. This flexibility complicated reconciliation across online, phone, and in-person transactions.

To solve this, Staycity needed to integrate its payment solution with Oracle OPERA, its property management system. Staff use OPERA to manage reservations, guest profiles, pricing, and other property services. Without an integrated payment solution, internal teams couldn’t see complete transaction histories, limiting guest personalization and making payment reconciliation manual and time-consuming. An integrated payment vendor working with both OPERA and Tevalis would enable seamless transactions across online bookings, phone reservations, self-check-in kiosks, and food and beverage services.

Staycity also needed a provider offering a variety of payment solutions. With international guests, the company wanted the flexibility to support different payment methods and local currencies to match regional preferences and enable future expansion—without building separate payments infrastructure in each new market. The company also wanted to simplify its online booking experience, so guests would book directly, rather than through online travel agents (OTAs).

“We wanted best-in-class conversion rates for our ecommerce platform to support our direct distribution strategy,” said Paolo Donà, chief information officer at Staycity Group.

Staycity also needed to safeguard transactions against fraud, a common challenge for international hospitality businesses.

Solution

Staycity migrated to Stripe in 2025 for its integration with OPERA and Tevalis, its ability to unify the company’s multichannel payment experience, and its support for global expansion. “Stripe had a level of technical expertise and depth that was higher than the competition. We wanted a partner that could scale with us and support our global ambition,” said Donà.

Staycity integrated Stripe Terminal with Oracle OPERA, ensuring that when guests pay for reservations and incidentals online or in person at kiosks using a Stripe Reader S700, all transactions are captured in OPERA. This unified approach reduced friction for guests and streamlined reconciliation and reporting.

To cater to its global customer base, Staycity integrated Stripe Payments and Stripe’s Optimized Checkout Suite into its online booking system. The suite increases conversion through localized payment experiences, including the Payment Element, built-in AI, and access to more than 125 payment methods and over 135 currencies. Staycity enabled credit cards, digital wallets (including PayPal, Apple Pay, Revolut Pay, and Google Pay), Klarna’s buy now, pay later option, and Link—a digital wallet built by Stripe that autofills payment data for faster checkout.

Staycity also accepts a variety of currencies, including the Japanese yen, British pounds, US dollars, euros, Australian dollars, and Canadian dollars. Stripe Adaptive Pricing uses AI to automatically display prices in each customer’s local currency, and Stripe’s FX Quotes ensures localized pricing encompasses exchange rates and foreign exchange (FX) fees for transactions.

“We want customers to be able to pay in the way they want to, so that there are no barriers to purchasing. And being able to display prices in the guest’s currency makes everything very transparent,” said Donà.

Staycity is also implementing Stripe Radar, which uses AI trained on millions of transactions to identify and mitigate fraud.

Results

Staycity increased authorization rates 10% and yielded €1M+ in net revenue from multicurrency conversions with Payments and the Optimized Checkout Suite

Staycity uses the Optimized Checkout Suite to create a frictionless, digital-first booking experience. The company now offers nine payment methods and accepts six currencies that are dynamically presented based on the customer’s location, ensuring that guests worldwide have a comfortable booking experience. This approach increased conversion rates, enabling Staycity to rely less on OTAs for bookings. Offering flexible payment methods increased authorization rates 10% and decreased checkout abandonment by 17%, while localized pricing through FX Quotes yielded over €1 million in net revenue from multicurrency conversion within the first year.

“Almost overnight, we saw authorization rates go up by 10%, which is massive and puts us right up there with the best in the market,” said Donà.

Staycity unified the multichannel payment experience with Terminal and OPERA

After Staycity integrated the Stripe Terminal SDK, guests can now pay online or in person according to their preference. Hotel staff can view each guest’s complete transaction history in OPERA, enabling more personalized customer service and easier payment reconciliation across guest visits and vendors.

“By integrating Terminal and OPERA, we have reception, online, and back-office payments all in one place, and the whole guest journey is absolutely seamless,” said Donà.

Staycity rolls out Terminal across 30 hotels in 3 months

After completing initial development and proof of concept, Staycity rolled out the Terminal integration to 30 hotels in 3 months and to all remaining hotels in 6 months.

“We had a period of proof of concept to test the waters. We quickly saw that the Stripe technical team was very knowledgeable and fast, as they built out the deep integration with OPERA,” said Donà.

Staycity plans for rapid growth powered by Stripe

Staycity operates in more than 19 cities across 8 countries, including Austria, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, and the UK. The company will rely on Stripe’s global payments infrastructure to support its next phase of growth.

“We’re on a fast growth journey, set to nearly triple our portfolio by 2032—scaling from 6,300 keys today to around 18,000, with 7–8 new hotels signed each year,” said Donà.