Choosing a reliable credit card payment processor shouldn’t be hard. However, this seems to only apply to established businesses. For growing ones, however, choosing the ideal payment processor is more of an art than an arithmetic adventure. Sure enough, one has to calculate such things as the percentage of each transaction that the processor will take. On the flip side though, there are other considerations that matter more than the aforementioned calculation. Such considerations can be hard to quantify. They range from customer service and technical support all the way to POS systems and even networking. So how should one choose an ideal payment processor and how exactly can this act alone boost sales? Read on to find out.
Versatile Payment Processors
The business world evolves all the time. What trends today becomes obsolete tomorrow. How you keep up with trends and evolve with the industry can easily give you an edge over your competitors. With the rise and rise of sophisticated security requirements, proliferation of mobile payments and cloud based computing, there is no doubt at all that the technology around payment processing is growing fast. The best a payment processor can do is to keep up with trends or pave way for competitors. Who would’ve thought EMV, the now popular chip based system would be wholly embraced by payment processors? But they did. This alone, transformed payment processing and reduced fraud significantly. Payment processors were left with no choice but to embrace the new trend.
Industry Specialization
The payment processor field is dominated by just a handful of major players. It is common to find a payment processor responsible for billions of transactions in more than 100 countries. While this can be appealing to big companies, there is a catch to it. Is your desired payment processor familiar with your business? If you are a franchise holder, then by all means stick to a payment processor familiar with franchise systems and all the quirks that come along with the industry. This will make it easy for you to get along with your payment processor and in the process, build a rapport. You can then focus on other key areas of your business with the peace of mind that one of the most critical aspects of your business is handled by an entity that understands the market better than you do.
Loyalty Programs
There is no doubt about it. Loyalty programs can help a business generate more sales. But like any business consultant will tell you, loyalty programs are as good and efficient as the payment processors that run them. With a good processor, you can create loyalty programs that clients love and at the same time, generate data that can be later analyzed to understand your customer trends. In a nutshell, look beyond what your desired payment processor offers. Be keen on how data flows through your system, what type of payment information is shared and how consumer data is stored.
Technical Support
This should be a no brainer. Response should be prompt each time you face a technical setback. Keep in mind too that other technical aspects of a payment processor matter. The security of the whole system is a good example of a technical aspect you should never ignore.