What To Look For in a Payment Processing Solution

Your payment processing solution is crucial to your business and, quite frankly, your success. A poor choice of payment processing software could lead to scaling inefficiencies, low payment acceptance rates, high fees, and, ultimately, loss of customers.

If a quality payment processing platform works as intended, it lets you focus on what you’re good at – building your business.

Payment processing solutions are pervasive on the internet. If you search Google, it will bombard you with countless options, but they’re not all created equally.

Payment processors are typically for-profit companies with a unique spin on their services. They set their pricing and make their own rules. Taking the time to choose the best solution could save you countless hours of frustration in the future.

What Is a Payment Processing Solution?

Payment processing solutions are services offered by financial institutions that make it easy for you to accept multiple forms of payments from your customers. For example, Card Present (in-person) payment processing solution typically includes a credit card terminal, allowing you to accept credit and debit card payments.

Card Not Present (online payment processing solution typically expands these options, allowing you to accept electronic checks and automatically charge your customer’s other payment methods for subscriptions.

Why a Subscription Business Needs Capable Payment Processing

Subscription payment processing is more involved than traditional in-person payments. To get the most out of your business, you need to generate automatic charges for your customers when their bills are due and process payments.

The days of sending invoices and waiting for payment are long gone.  

The best payment processing systems for subscription businesses will go well beyond automatically processing payments when they’re due. Processing payments through multiple providers not only can lift approval rates, but avoid embarrassing emails to customers about their payment declined.  Decline recovery is also table stakes when it comes to the best payment systems on the market.   Some also include tools to help increase your payment acceptance rate. For example, they may automatically email your customers when their payment methods expire and ask them to put new payment methods on file if their payment method is not enrolled in an automated account updater.  

A key factor that is rarely discussed is if your payment processor accepts ecommerce payments and the associated data.  Features like Network Tokenization can lower your interchange cost by 9 bps and will enable features like real-time account updater to ensure your payment methods on file are current.  Additionally, your processor should support persisting Network Transaction ID as well as the full suite of ECI codes so your transaction is categorized correctly.  The very best processors will also approve multiple MCC codes to allow the merchant to best direct the transaction based on the service being sold, card, and consumer.  

Key Elements in a Payment Processing Platform

All payment processing platforms can accept payments, but payment acceptance is only one aspect of a quality option. If you’re looking for a new platform for your business, consider the following:

1. Secure Payment Processing To Prevent Fraudulent Transactions

Security and fraud prevention should always be your top priority for online payment processing. After all, you don’t want to be the reason one of your customers becomes a victim of identity theft or has to dispute credit card transactions, going through the hassle of replacing their cards.

Quality payment platforms offer bank-level security with everything they do. That way, you and your customers can rest assured that secure payment processing is the status quo whether your business conducts online transactions or in-person sales. 

2. Dynamic Routing To Limit Failed Payments and Customer Churn

In simple terms, payment processing solutions send customer data across a network to verify and capture available funds for purchases. Thankfully, technological innovation has made this a pretty efficient process.

Nonetheless, the best options offer dynamic routing.

Dynamic Routing uses intelligence that analyzes a host of data such as card issuer, transaction type, merchant id and others to figure out the best time/route/processor etc that will have the highest chance of transaction approval. Thus increasing the merchant’s acceptance rate. . This approach limits failed payments due to false declines and customer churns, both associated with high payment failure rates.

3. Minimal Transaction Fees

Payment processors are in business to make money, and they do so by charging transaction fees. Some processors charge a monthly fee each time you attempt to process a payment method and a percentage of the payment total. Others may charge a fee based on a percent of the transaction amount.

You need to know the fees you agree to before you sign up with any payment processor. The best options offer transparent pricing that’s easy to understand and competitive, letting you keep more of your profit margin in-house to grow your business.

4. Processes Mobile Payments and Other Flexible Payment Options

Some processing platforms are still in the past, where you can only process payments on a hard-wired terminal. Others offer more flexible payment options like:

• Online payments via credit card or electronic check;
• mobile card readers for on-the-go businesses; and
• contactless payment solutions to reduce the spread of dangerous pathogens.

Think of the options you want from your payment processor and find one that makes those options available to you.

5. Easy To Integrate Into Your Current Business Model and Scalable

Your business is unique. You built it from the ground up and did it your way. That’s why it’s so important to use an integrated payment processing solution that fits in with your unique business model.

For example, you wouldn’t want to work with a payment processor that only offers hard-wired solutions if you run a food truck. It’s critical that your payment processing solution molds to your business, not the other way around.

It’s also important that your processing solution can grow with you without becoming exorbitantly expensive in the process.

Your business may be relatively small now. You might have a few employees and generate a meaningful income that supports your lifestyle, but like all business owners, you have dreams of building your company to its full potential.

The best payment processing platforms evolve with you, helping you manage fees, maintain high payment acceptance rates, and give you all the options you need to continue building your business, regardless of size.

Turn to Revolv3 To Process Your Recurring Payments

If you’re looking for a quality payment processing company, look no further than Revolv3. The platform is a robust payment solution for all business types and sizes, with several core advantages that set it apart from the rest. Some of the Revolv3 benefits include:

• No Fee for Failed Payments. Most processors charge a fee whether payments are successful or not. Revolv3 doesn’t charge you unless you receive payment.
• Dynamic Routing. Dynamic routing results in lower failure rates and customer churn.
• Scalability. Simple to scale your payment solution to meet your business needs as your company grows.

Learn how Revolv3 can help your business. Request a free demo today.