HotelRunner offers agencies software to make smooth international payments

Launch of Ruby sets foundation for ‘new era of embedded finance in travel’

HotelRunner has launched an embedded and autonomous finance infrastructure for travel.

The travel and hospitality technology platform says its Ruby software “delivers faster, more transparent, and regulation-ready payment flows, reshaping the financial backbone of global travel commerce”.

Ruby is built on the HotelRunner platform and offers full visibility and control over the reservation lifecycle, from booking creation to in-stay updates, synchronising and reconciling all financial transactions between travel agencies and accommodation partners in real time.

The firm says it has an advantage against other fintechs operating in the ‘increasingly global and complex’ sector because it is a ‘travel-native’ and nor ‘retrofitted from traditional finance’.

Ruby offers an end-to-end financial layer which allows, for example, a travel agency in Germany to instantly and autonomously pay a hotel in Thailand in local currency.

Rıza Kaynak, director of demand partnerships at HotelRunner, said: “Ruby represents a leap forward for the global travel economy.

“We understand the pain points of agencies, hotels, and suppliers because we’ve been building alongside them for over a decade. Ruby is our answer — a financial infrastructure engineered to accelerate growth, eliminate inefficiencies, and future-proof the industry’s money movement.”

HotelRunner recently announced a global strategic partnership with Visa to deliver end-to-end financial infrastructure for the travel industry.

Ruby, it says, serves as the ‘connective layer’ uniting HotelRunner’s ecosystem of partners, establishing the foundation for ‘a new era of embedded finance in travel’.

The infrastructure integrates policy and compliance intelligence, including KYC management, ensuring every transaction meets global standards.

Ruby is designed to eliminate friction, automate oversight, and create transparency across money flows, uniting data, compliance, and payments in one autonomous system.

HotelRunner has an early-adopter ecosystem of travel agencies and more than 10,000 pre-enrolled accommodation partners across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

It is targeting Ruby to process more than US$4 billion in transactions annually, “helping countries with ambitious tourism goals capture a larger share of global travel demand”.