Payment Terms and Service Charge

1. How payments work

Alejo OS helps a hotel take and record payments from its guests. When a guest pays for a room, a meal, an event ticket, a stay extension or an outstanding balance, the sale is between the guest and the hotel. The hotel is the seller and the merchant of record. Consulaw Tech Services (“we”) provides the software. We are not a bank, we do not hold guest funds for our own account beyond routing them, and we are not a party to the sale.

Card and bank-transfer payments are processed by third-party payment gateways, currently Paystack and Stripe. A guest enters their card or bank details on the gateway’s own secure page. Alejo OS never sees or stores full card numbers or card security codes.

2. Ways a guest can pay

• Cash at the front desk. Recorded by staff. No online payment is involved.
• Room tab. Food, tickets and extensions are added to the guest’s folio and settled later, for example at check-out.
• Pay online by card or bank transfer. Through the guest’s phone (food orders, event tickets, stay extensions, or their outstanding balance), or through a payment link or QR code a staff member shares.

A guest is never forced to pay online. The room tab and the front desk are always available while the guest is staying at the hotel.

3. The platform fee (paid by the hotel)

Alejo OS takes a platform fee on payments made through it, as set out in the Terms of Service and shown on the Pricing page and in the hotel’s account. This fee is a cost of the hotel’s business. By default the hotel pays it out of what it collects. The optional service charge below lets a hotel share that cost with guests who choose to pay online.

4. The optional online payment service charge

A hotel can choose to add an online payment service charge to payments made online by card or bank transfer. It is off by default. It is a separate, itemised line, never folded into a menu price, room rate or ticket price.

• When it applies. Only when a guest pays online by card or bank transfer, and only if the hotel has switched it on. It applies the same way to food orders, event tickets, stay extensions and balance payments.
• When it never applies. Cash, and anything added to the room tab or paid at the front desk. A guest can always avoid the charge by choosing one of those options.
• Shown before you pay. The amount, the charge as a percentage, and the total to pay are displayed on the payment screen before the guest confirms. Staff-generated payment links show the total on the payment page.
• Shown afterwards. The receipt lists the amount and the service charge as separate lines and the hotel’s records keep them separate.

How the amount is worked out. If the hotel uses Alejo OS’s payment account, the charge is set so the hotel receives the full price, with the platform fee covered by the charge. That means the charge is the fee divided by what is left after the fee. For example, on a 5% platform fee the charge is about 5.26% of the amount. If the hotel uses its own payment gateway, the hotel sets its own percentage (up to 10%) and keeps it. Amounts are rounded up to the nearest kobo.

The service charge is not a tip, and it is not a charge for hotel services. It is a charge for the convenience of paying online, so that guests who choose that convenience, rather than the hotel’s other guests, bear its cost.

5. Rules for hotels that use the service charge

You are the seller to your guests, so how you describe and apply the service charge is your responsibility. If you turn it on, you confirm and agree that:

• guests can always pay without it, by cash or the room tab, and your staff will not refuse those options;
• the charge is shown to guests before they pay, and you do not describe it as a tax, a government levy or a bank charge;
• you will not add the charge to cash, room-tab or front-desk payments, or charge it a second time;
• you will not use it to disguise a price increase, and prices on your menu and rate cards are not affected by it;
• you have considered how the charge is treated for tax, including VAT and any consumption or hospitality taxes, and account for it accordingly;
• your use of the charge complies with the law that applies to you, including Nigerian consumer protection law (the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Act 2018) and the rules of the Central Bank of Nigeria and card schemes, some of which can limit or condition surcharging on card payments;
• you will refund the charge when you refund the payment it was collected on, unless the law lets you keep it.

When you turn the charge on in Settings, Payments, you are asked to confirm the first two points, and we keep a record of who confirmed and when. We may switch the charge off for a hotel, or limit its maximum rate, if we reasonably believe it is being used unfairly or unlawfully, or if the law or a payment partner requires it. We will tell the hotel when we do.

Nothing here is legal or tax advice. If you are unsure whether the service charge is right for your hotel, get advice from your own lawyer or accountant before switching it on.

6. What guests should know

• The service charge is optional for you. You can avoid it by paying cash or adding the item to your room tab.
• You will see the exact total before you pay. If you don’t see a service charge line, none applies.
• It is set by the hotel, not by your bank or card. Questions about it should go to the hotel’s front desk. If they can’t resolve it, you can write to us at consulawtech@gmail.com and we will pass it on to the hotel.
• Your payment is taken by Paystack or Stripe on their own page. We never see your card details.

7. Receipts and records

After a successful online payment, the guest gets an emailed receipt (if the hotel has their email) showing the amount, any service charge, the total and the payment method. Hotels can see every payment, the service charge on it, and totals for each period in their Payments and Finances pages, and can export them to CSV.

8. Refunds, disputes and chargebacks

Refunds and disputes are between the guest and the hotel, under the hotel’s policies and the law. Where a payment is refunded because the goods or services were not delivered or were wrong, the service charge collected on that payment should be returned with it. Refunds go back to the original payment method through the gateway and can take several working days to appear.

If a guest disputes a card payment with their bank (a chargeback), the gateway may reverse the whole payment, including the service charge, and the hotel is responsible for responding to the dispute. Alejo OS can supply payment records to help.

9. Pending and failed payments

An online payment starts as “pending” until the gateway confirms it. The guest’s balance changes only after confirmation. If a payment is abandoned or fails, nothing is taken and the balance is unchanged. If a payment is still pending, Alejo OS asks a guest to finish or wait before starting another for the same stay, to avoid paying twice.

If you were charged and the hotel’s balance did not update, contact the front desk with your payment reference. The hotel or we can check the status with the gateway and correct the record.

10. Taxes

Prices set by the hotel are the hotel’s to state, including whether taxes are included. Alejo OS does not calculate or remit the hotel’s taxes. Our platform fee may attract tax where the law requires, which is added to our invoices to the hotel.

11. Payment security

Card data is handled by our payment partners, which maintain their own security certifications. Payment gateway credentials that hotels give us are encrypted at rest. Payment confirmations from gateways are verified before a balance changes. Read more in our Data Processing Agreement.

12. Questions or complaints

Email consulawtech@gmail.com or use the contact form. Please include the hotel’s name and, for a payment, the reference from your receipt.