The new partnerships with WellnessLiving and Tevalis will provide specialist payments expertise for customers with an online presence and with physical stores, across the leisure and hospitality sectors. As non-essential stores reopen for business, and pubs and restaurants return to serving food and drink indoors, being able to offer customers a seamless payment experience is critical to success.

WellnessLiving and Tevalis’ leisure and hospitality customers, such as gyms, pubs, bars and restaurants, will now have the opportunity to access Barclaycard’s payments platform and select Barclaycard as a new payment provider, benefiting from a trusted and secure payment gateway through which to process transactions.

WellnessLiving – a cloud-based solution for the fitness, health and wellness industry supporting 5,000 businesses worldwide, will see the full integration of Barclaycard’s Smartpay Fuse gateway into its booking management solution to provide a safe and frictionless checkout experience when taking payment for classes, appointments memberships or repeat services.

The integration with Barclaycard Payments allows a customer to see availability online, select a session and make payment all on the same page seamlessly. There is no need to go into a gym, spa or salon and personally set up a direct debit – instead, the customer can complete the whole process online. A new customer’s account ID can be set up, as well as the option to hold card details and schedule payments online, though a secure and trusted payment provider.

With the pandemic limiting face-to face interaction, WellnessLiving gives customers the ability to host live and on-demand fitness classes online, for their clients. This is made even easier thanks to the partnership with Barclaycard Payments, because clients can book and pay for the entire experience simply and securely, giving them more time to focus on their fitness and wellbeing.

As eating and dining out becomes part of daily life once more, Tevalis – a leading electronic point-of-sale technology provider – has been making the transition easier for the hospitality industry. Tevalis supports over 2,000 UK hospitality businesses of all sizes, including pubs, bars, restaurants and hotels. The integration of Tevalis’ systems with Barclaycard terminals means the average sale processing time is reduced, helping to improve speed-of-service, customer satisfaction and productivity.

The integration will also reduce human error, because staff will no longer type the payment amount into their card machine by hand, which means that customers won’t be accidentally over or under-charged. Reconciliation is fully automated, meaning there is no need to cross-check figures against end-of-day reports when completing the final settlement, saving staff valuable time.

Furthermore, with customers favouring fast and simple ordering methods, Tevalis’ new order and pay app allows customers to scan a QR code, prompting the free app to be downloaded. This then allows the customer to order their favourite dishes to their table and the integration with Barclaycard means customers can make payments seamlessly.

In addition to these two new agreements, Barclaycard Payments is also extending its partnership with BigCommerce, the e-commerce platform catering to more than 60,000 customers worldwide – from large corporates to small and medium sized businesses. The partnership will now offer digital on-boarding in the UK, meaning smaller businesses can set up their online payments quickly and seamlessly. This will allow them to start trading faster, maximising sales, without compromising on security.

Nicole Olbe, Managing Director of Partnerships at Barclaycard Payments, said: “The past year has been very challenging for SMEs, in particular those in the retail, leisure and hospitality sectors. Strengthening our e-commerce capabilities with BigCommerce will speed up the process for smaller businesses wanting to go online allowing businesses to increase sales and maximise profit. In addition, partnering with WellnessLiving and Tevalis has given us the ability to deliver an equally seamless online and in-store payment experience across specialist businesses in the leisure and hospitality sectors.

With the reopening up of non-essential stores and the wider economy, retailers are tasked with drawing back their physical customer base as well as continuing to drive growth online, in order to be successful. Thanks to these new partnerships, merchants will benefit from having a market-leading, trusted and secure payments platform, giving them peace of mind, and the head space to really focus on what they do best – driving growth.”