Katanox, a platform that offers financial infrastructure for hospitality distribution, has secured a FCA PSD2 authorisation to deliver payment services in the UK.
This move will extend the firm’s presence beyond the EEA, where it already owns a PSD2 license. The company believes that the UK is a key market for the travel industry, and this approval enables it to offer a regulated financial infrastructure for its clients, reducing operational fragmentation.
More about Katanox
By utilising Katanox, hotels and travel agencies can transition to automated bank payouts, eliminating the need for additional integrations that offer costly, not secure, and error-prone bookings and transactions executed with VCCs. The platform aims to improve processes and drive growth in the travel industry by consolidation payments reconciliation, direct contracting, connectivity, and rate integration into a single place. This delivers efficient workflows, faster payouts, control, and transparency.
Hospitality firms face problems regarding multiple integrations and datasets across various business functions. Katanox simplifies these complex frameworks by consolidating several functions into a single platform.
According to a study published by Adyen, 31% of hotels think that reconciliation and associated operations were slowing down their business goals. On average, five employees support reconciliation, with each spending approximately 7 hours per week on this task. This reflects that fragmentation remains a challenge in the industry, and Katanox aims to tackle this issue by addressing these inefficiencies and giving teams the opportunity to focus on delivering better services.
Failed payments are also part of the problem, as up to 35% of all VCC transactions fail during check-in, according to Poppink TRVL Projects. Katanox aims to reduce this rate and improve customer experience by optimising payment acceptance through direct bank processing. By removing technical and financial barriers in B2B operations and guest-facing transactions, the company makes travel simpler for suppliers, buyers, and their clients.
