Are You in a Healthy Relationship with Your Payment Provider?
Unhappy in your relationship with your payments provider?
Sometimes we get comfortable in partnerships and come to accept things that we know we shouldn’t, but we do because we think change is too hard or we are worried that it might take too long/might not be worth the effort. The world of eCommerce is fast paced; rules and regulations are added and amended so quickly that it is hard to keep up, so it is essential that your payments provider is working with and not against you. But how do you know if your payments provider is giving you the service you need or if they are just going through the motions?
If any of the below scenarios sound familiar you may need to reevaluate:
Your Payment Service Provider’s response times are less than satisfactory
It might be an idea to look elsewhere if after wooing you and your business by saying all the right things, your PSP is now ghosting you. We guarantee that as soon as you ask to leave, they will start returning your calls. Payments are what keeps your business going and if you can’t get hold of your PSP when you need them, it could spell trouble. Never underestimate the importance of customer service.
Customers abandon their carts and don’t complete transactions
After spending time browsing through your goods and services, happily adding products to their basket, your customers get to the checkout and abandon their carts. This normally happens as potential purchasers are unable to find a payment method which they feel comfortable using. It is also a sure-fire sign that all is not well and change is needed. Don’t let your relationship cost you your business, make sure you have the payment methods in place to support your potential clients.
They’re controlling of your payment data
Has your payment service provider taken on the persona of a jealous lover? Are they making unreasonable demands and not so idle threats? In fact some PSPs will even go as far as locking their customers in (provider lock-in) by refusing to hand over your payment data. It will come as no surprise that when put in positions of power people/companies can behave in ways that are, how can we put this nicely, less than professional. The top three “excuses” we have seen for PSPs not wanting to share your payments data are:
- We have fraud protection, this will be compromised if we are not your sole payments provider.
- Customer data is automatically filled in, you won't be able to do this without us.
- You will no longer benefit from our personal optimizations.
All we can say to this is, nonsense. There is much to be said about the benefits of payments polygamy or polypayments if you will, so let’s check them out:
Never forget: you are in charge of your payments
A payment management platform is designed to put you, the merchant, in charge. That is why we have the IXOPAY Card Vault. This vault provides an independent means of storing and tokenizing your customers’ payment data. Our PCI-DSS Level 1 and GDPR-compliant solution gives you flexibility, reliability and the largest possible degree of independence from your payment service providers. Don’t let them hold all the cards!
Increase conversion rates
With the IXOPAY Smart Routing Engine, you can define various flow strategies for your payment transactions, allowing you to forward each individual transaction to the best suited payment service provider which will increase conversions and reduce transaction fees. There are many ways in which you can control the routing decisions: card data, customer data, geographic parameters, risk classification as well as any number of platform and application-specific data.
Lower your payment costs
By choosing a multi-acquirer setup, you not only have more flexibility but also lower costs. With these two tips you can reduce transaction fees:
1. If you decide to work with more than one PSP, you are in a better negotiating position. Don’t be tricked into thinking exclusivity gives you the best rates, take it from us; it doesn’t.
2. Using local PSPs reduces transaction costs. The rule of thumb is the greater the distance between the issuer and the PSP, the higher the fees and an increase in the volume of transactions declined.
Get the support you need
Our state-of-the-art Risk Management Engine, let’s you create your own risk rules giving each transaction an individual risk score. This score can then be used to accept, block, or push transactions to manual review. And if you would like to have additional protection, you can implement a third-party provider such as Kount or NOTO. With protection like this you will be able to reduce fraud and protect your bottom line.
Not only that but IXOPAY also has a network operation center (NOC) that offers 24h customer support, so if something doesn’t seem right to you, we are there to help you figure it out.
If your payment provider is the bees knees and you are really happy with their service, brilliant! There are some truly fantastic providers out there. However, we would always recommend having a backup, just in case something were to happen so that your eCommerce would still be able to function.
About IXOPAY
IXOPAY is a payments orchestration platform enabling independent, flexible and global payment processing. As a highly scalable and PCI-DSS certified “fintech enabler”, IXOPAY fulfills the needs of large merchants as well as those of “white label” clients: payment service providers (PSPs), acquirers and independent sales organizations (ISOs). The modern, easily extendable architecture offers smart transaction routing & cascading, state-of-the-art risk & fraud management, fully automated reconciliation and settlements processing, comprehensive reporting as well as plugin-based integration of acquirers, payment service providers and alternative payment methods (APMs).
IXOPAY is part of the IXOLIT Group, founded in Vienna, Austria in 2001. With local entities in Austria and the USA, IXOLIT supports national and international customers across various industry verticals. The owner-led and -financed company has grown from 2 to more than 65 employees and is focused on building innovative solutions for eCommerce.
Please find more information about IXOPAY here: https://www.ixopay.com