Mews becomes first hospitality operating system in EEA to secure an e-money license

License gives Mews capability to process payments on its own infrastructure

Mews Financial Services BV, its regulated financial entity of Mews, has been granted an Electronic Money Institution (EMI) license by De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) in a landmark move for the European ecosystem. 

Until now, the operational record has lived in Mews while the financial record has originated in third-party systems but now the license gives Mews a regulated status in the European Economic Area (EEA), enabling it to unify payment services, financial workflows and operational data within a single system. 

A move to allow revenue to be created in one place will also lay the foundations for Mews to build new financial capabilities on top of its existing infrastructure, the firm have said. 

The license is a foundational step in Mews' ambition to make its operating system the home for financial services purpose-built for hospitality, where running the business and managing its money begin to come together in a single platform.

New capabilities thanks to the license for hoteliers will include risk, fraud monitoring, sanctions screening and anti-money laundering controls directly into the Mews operating system, though the new financial services won't be rolled out until late 2026, beginning with a pilot group of properties in the Netherlands before expanding progressively across the EEA.

The long-term ambition is to "become the financial partner hospitality leaders trust, turning the operational data that already flows through the platform into new financial products that help hotels grow revenue and run stronger businesses".

Richard Valtr, founder of Mews said: "For all the software running hotels today, money has never worked as one connected system: a processor here, a bank there, a reconciliation spreadsheet in between. 

"So, an operating system for a hotel has to include financial management, because so much of productivity and growth comes down to managing risk. 

"Embedded payments started to close the gap. This licence gives us the foundation to go further, building the financial infrastructure this industry has been missing, so money works around how the hotel runs, not the other way round."