Guesty, an AI platform for short-term rentals, and Column N.A., a nationally chartered bank, announced a partnership to modernize the financial back office for professional property managers.
Column was built from the ground up to power modern finance, with its own core, ledger and direct connections to global payment networks. It processes more than $4.5 trillion in transaction volume annually and provides banking infrastructure for technology and financial companies.
The initial partnership focuses on purpose-built banking for eligible Guesty customers in the United States and internationally. At launch, operators can open Column deposit and trust accounts designed for fiduciary workflows: separated trust and operating funds, role-based permissions and approval controls and pass-through FDIC insurance for owner funds, subject to applicable requirements and limits. Mutual customers also receive direct access to Column’s APIs for programmatic banking, paired with white-glove support from a dedicated property management banking team.
Property managers collect guest payments, safeguard owner funds, pay vendors, reconcile accounts and distribute proceeds. Guesty already powers many of those workflows through payments, accounting, owner financial management and capital products. Column adds banking built for complex financial and fiduciary operations.
“Property managers are already running sophisticated financial operations inside Guesty. Their banking should be able to keep up,” said Yair Holtzer, chief revenue officer of Guesty. “Column gives our customers a banking option built for their business today, and a foundation to make financial operations more connected over time.”
Both Guesty and Column are built on open APIs. The companies plan to use them to build native integrations over time, starting with automated bank reconciliation for trust accounting and faster owner distributions, cutting manual financial work and connecting banking activity directly to the workflows operators already run in Guesty.
“Traditional banking wasn’t designed to handle the complexity of vacation rental management, where operators manage owner funds, guest payments, OTA reconciliation and compliance every day,” said George Cheng, general manager and head of vertical solutions of Column. “Guesty is already automating these workflows, and with this new partnership, Column is proud to offer eligible Guesty customers bank accounts that can finally keep up with their business, save time, and cut costs.”
