BIRCHSTREET SYSTEMS
Joining Birchstreet gave Phil the opportunity to bring these best practices to an industry in need of modernisation.
The hospitality sector presents unique challenges. Unlike other industries that have shifted towards digitalfirst payments, hospitality still relies heavily on manual processes. Cheque payments remain common, creating inefficiencies and increasing fraud risk, as well as leading to friction in supply chain processes.
Within this context, Phil’ s objective is to embed payment capabilities directly into Birchstreet’ s procurement platform.“ This has been a chance to bring best practices from all sizes and scales into a vertical that has a definite need to modernise and digitise payments,” he says.
The goal is that, rather than payments being treated as a separate function and the purview of finance departments, data and controls sit where they are most needed: with frontline operators dealing with suppliers every day.
“ We’ ve brought it front and centre to the frontline operator, which changes the dynamic and the experience for that customer,” Phil highlights.
Digitalisation and efficiency in hospitality Birchstreet serves all the major global hospitality brands alongside property management companies, casinos, food services providers and group purchasing organisations. Its platform, developed through deep collaboration with customers and strategic partners, helps users, suppliers and organisations
“ We want to define and build the best embedded payments platform for hospitality”
Phil Beck, Executive VP & GM, BirchStreet Pay
to optimise processes, transform operations and improve margins.
The company’ s platform enhances business processes by automating eProcurement, AP automation, inventory control, recipe management and analytics.
In order to effectively drive this transformation, Phil has spent much of his first year engaging closely with customers.“ They have been great and very welcoming,” he says,“ helping to educate me rapidly on the differences that are inherent in the industry.”
Learning hospitality from the inside has revealed operational complexities Phil never experienced as a business traveller.
For example, one of the biggest challenges has been adapting broad, horizontal payment capabilities for hospitality’ s specific needs. Birchstreet’ s unique value proposition lies in its ability to fine-tune platforms and solutions typically created to serve multiple industries into hospitality-specific solutions.
116 March 2026