handshake.link

What It Is

Handshake is a payment-link service for the hotel industry, positioned as “Next Generation Payments for Hotels.” Its core use case is helping hotels send payment links to guests and collect booking or service payments more securely. The page explicitly mentions use cases including offline, online, phone, B2B, Booking.com and Expedia reservations, as well as hotel add-ons such as transfers and dinners.

Core Capabilities and Compliance

Based on the disclosed information, Handshake is not a general-purpose acquiring platform, but rather a payment-link tool built around card-not-present payments for hotels. It highlights PSD2, GDPR and PCI compliance, and mentions Strong Customer Authentication, 3D Secure and card tokenization. These capabilities are practically valuable for European hotels handling remote card payments and reducing the risk of unauthorized transactions. However, the page does not disclose specific acquiring licenses, acquiring partners, supported card networks or local payment methods. It also does not state whether multi-currency payments, refunds, pre-authorizations or chargeback handling are supported.

Pricing and Settlement

The crawled content does not provide pricing details such as rates, monthly fees, transaction fees or refund fees, so its cost competitiveness cannot be assessed. The page says merchants can “get paid instantly,” but does not further clarify whether this refers to payment confirmation, funds arriving in a merchant balance, or settlement to a bank account. It also does not disclose settlement timelines such as T+0 or T+1.

Pros and Cons

Its main advantage is its highly vertical use case: hotels can use a single payment-link flow to cover phone bookings, supplemental payments for OTA reservations and charges for add-on services. Its compliance and security messaging is also relatively complete, making it suitable for hotels that need to meet European payment authentication requirements. The drawback is the limited public information: there is little detail on fees, coverage regions, APIs, PMS/channel manager integrations, customer support or risk-control mechanisms. Buyers should request pricing and verify capabilities before purchasing.

Best Fit and Access from China

Handshake is better suited to hotels, resorts and accommodation operators in Europe, or those serving European guests, that need remote payment collection and compliant card payments. Access from China is not mentioned in the source text, so it is unknown. Chinese merchants looking for alternatives may compare Stripe Payment Links, Adyen, Worldline, Mollie, PayPal Pay Links or built-in payment modules within hotel PMS systems.