How Nature.house takes secure payments for 10,000 nature holiday homes across Europe with OPP Escrow

OPP and Nature.house partnered so that guests can pay for a stay through the platform without Nature.house ever holding their money. Payments run through OPP into escrow, hosts are paid at the moment they choose, and the service fee is split off automatically.

Nature.house lists around 10,000 holiday homes across Europe, all of them surrounded by nature rather than sitting in a holiday park. For every night booked, the platform plants a tree; the count stood at 657,813 when this story was written. Founders Luuk and Tim van Oerle built the platform to bring supply and demand together instead of owning properties, which is what let it grow internationally at speed.

The partnership: payments a marketplace can offer without becoming a bank

Nature.house always knew that taking payments on the platform would make it better for guests and hosts alike. What held it back was the legal side. OPP gave it a way to offer payments that keeps the money out of Nature.house’s hands, keeps the platform in line with PSD2, and still pays the service fee automatically on every booking.

The challenge: two parties, one payment, and a legal grey area

A marketplace has to serve hosts and guests at the same time. Guests expect to pay on the platform and to know their money is safe; hosts expect to be paid without chasing anyone. Nature.house wanted to offer exactly that. But taking payments between guests and hosts raised legal questions it could not answer on its own: who is party to the rental agreement, who may hold a guest’s money until the stay, and how escrow should work.

Most of the payment providers Nature.house spoke to were built for webshops. They lacked the knowledge and the tools a marketplace needs. That pointed to a provider specialised in platforms and marketplaces.

Our solution: escrow, split payments and a checkout in Nature.house’s own design

With OPP, no third-party funds ever sit with Nature.house. When a guest books, the money goes directly into OPP Escrow. The host is paid at the moment they choose, and Nature.house receives its service fee through multi-split on the same transaction. Hosts are verified through OPP’s onboarding, the payment flow itself runs through OPP, and PSD2 compliance comes with it.

Nature.house’s flows were not simple: partial payments, deposits, different moments of payout. OPP visited the team on location to draw out the entire payment flow together. The result is a checkout that runs in Nature.house’s own design, with no payment provider visible to the guest.

“Online Payment Platform has been a great help with the integration of payments on our platform. In particular, visiting us on location to draw out the entire payment flow together. The result? A checkout process that runs smoothly in our own design. The visitor is unaware of any PSP behind the scenes.”

Tim van Oerle, Founder of Nature.house

The impact: hosts relieved of administration, support calls going down

Hosts used to chase guests for payment. Now payments are collected automatically and the administration that came with them is gone. When something does go wrong, Nature.house’s support team contacts OPP’s support team directly, and because the process is well defined, that contact has become rarer over time.

Nature.house’s ambition is to be the global Airbnb of nature houses. OPP processes the international payments that come with that.

What this means for you: why rental marketplaces need a platform PSP

If you run a rental or booking marketplace, Nature.house’s question is probably yours: how do you offer payments between guests and hosts without holding the money, and without the legal exposure that comes with it?

A payment provider built for platforms answers it in one go. Funds go into escrow rather than to your account, hosts are paid when the deal says they should be, your fee is split off automatically, and PSD2 sits with the provider.

Want to see how escrow and split payments could work for your platform? Get in touch to learn more.