Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, June 27, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- FreedomPay, a global leader in Next Level Commerce™, collaborated with Cornell University’s Center for Hospitality Research to conduct a survey of senior US decision-maker employees in the Hospitality Industry to understand how merchants are solving for the future of the consumer-payment eco-system. Hanover Education conducted the research of the 226 respondents with key findings including:

• Data privacy, security, reliability and customer satisfaction are the most important attributes for payment technology solutions.
• Customization, acceptance of debit or credit cards, offering alternative payment methods, and number of accepted currencies are the most important features of payment technology solutions.
• Customer satisfaction is the highest priority for the largest share of companies when purchasing payment solutions.
• Two thirds of companies plan to purchase new payment technology solutions within the next 4 years.
• If budgets were unlimited, professionals would improve the reliability (42%), security (39%), customer loyalty programs (36%) and end-to-end data gathering capabilities (35%) of their payment systems.

“In the ever-evolving landscape of payments and guest preferences, hospitality industry leaders recognize that prioritizing security, privacy, and reliability in their payment technology investments builds trust, reduces friction, and enhances the guest experience, and altogether, I would expect this to boost loyalty,” said Linda Canina, Professor of Finance and Director of the Cornell Center for Hospitality Research.

This study found that most companies have been using their primary POS systems for at least 3 years and with two thirds of companies planning to purchase new payment technology solutions within the next 4 years, most merchants are therefore running on legacy payments technology almost a decade old.

“With hackers frequently changing their approaches, this isn’t often enough to protect consumer data and privacy, said Chris Kronenthal, President of FreedomPay. Similar to smartphone updates, our scalable payments software solutions are able to push frequent software updates as needed to ensure merchants payments technology always provides optimal security for its merchants and their customers.

Download the full survey results here and visit FreedomPay (booth #516) at HITEC June 26-29 in Toronto to see firsthand how their payments technology provides Next Level Commerce™.

About FreedomPay

FreedomPay’s Next Level Commerce™ platform transforms existing payment systems and processes from legacy to leading edge and enables merchants to unleash the power of pay. As the premier choice for many of the largest companies across the globe in retail, hospitality, lodging, gaming, sports and entertainment, foodservice, education, healthcare and financial services, FreedomPay’s technology has been purposely built to deliver rock solid performance in the highly complex environment of global commerce.

The company maintains a world-class security environment and was first to earn the coveted validation by the PCI Security Standards Council against Point-to-Point Encryption (P2PE/EMV) standard in North America. FreedomPay’s robust solutions across payments, security, identity, and data analytics are available in-store, online and on-mobile and are supported by rapid API adoption. The award winning FreedomPay Commerce Platform operates on a single, unified technology stack across multiple continents allowing enterprises to deliver an innovative Next Level experience on a global scale. www.freedompay.com

About Cornell University’s Center for Hospitality Research
The Center for Hospitality Research was created in 1992 for the purpose of expanding both the quality and volume of research supporting the hospitality industry and its related service industries.

www.sha.cornell.edu/chr/

Jennifer Tayebi
Hill+Knowlton Strategies for FreedomPay
+1 734 395 0780
jennifer.tayebi@hkstrategies.com