HomeAway is starting to make good on its pledge to speed the online booking of vacation rentals.
The vacation rental giant partnered with Yapstone and will use its VacationRentPayment solution to enable properties listed on HomeAway.com and VRBO to accept payments via credit cards, debit cards and electronic checks. Yapstone says the solution also includes integrated payment reporting.
Last summer HomeAway hired Brent Bellm, who worked at PayPal for the previous nine years, and there was speculation that the decision was colored in part by the need to enhance electronic payments.
And Brian Sharples, HomeAway cofounder and CEO, has gone on record saying that he wants to facilitate online booking of vacation rentals for a majority of the company's vacation-rental owners within three years.
The YapStone deal could be a step toward that goal.
Yapstone says its VacationRentPayment product will be "fully integrated into an online reservation mangement dashboard."
"By partnering with YapStone, we will advance our strategy to create the best traveler experience, offering a seamless process for our travelers and our owners to pay and collect payments online," says Sharples. "This is a major step to make booking vacation homes as easy as booking a hotel online."