The payments industry continues to expand and evolve at a rapid pace. With the rapid rise in e-commerce and online banking, digital transaction volume is increasing exponentially. This, in turn, affects what organizations are looking for in a payments processor. They are looking for an experienced processing partner that understands the evolving payments industry and meets all of their needs for speed, reliability, scalability, security, and global reach.
- Speed
When choosing a processor, merchants look for a partner that can get them up and running quickly, integrate new features with speed and ease, and efficiently respond to their service needs. Time to market is critical for merchants looking to offer consumers new experiences or take advantage of new opportunities in response to changing market trends
- Reliability
Businesses depend on transactions being processed and funds being deposited into their accounts on time every time. Technological glitches that interrupt service or delay the availability of funds can be problematic. If a processor is down, and a merchant is even temporarily unable to accept non-cash payments, sales will be affected.
- Scalability
Increasingly complex transactions require the ability to store and process large volumes of data. Whether planning for growth or wanting to add new features, flexibility is essential. Increases in processing demand must be met in real time. A platform that is not scalable will be unable to meet the demands of a dynamic industry.
- Security
The payments industry is a popular target for fraudulent actors because of the wealth of sensitive data that criminals hope to use to their advantage. Increasingly sophisticated attacks require processors with experience and expertise to detect fraud and prevent losses.
Tokenization is now considered a best practice for PCI compliance to reduce security risk. Sensitive data such as a bank account or credit card number is replaced with a random string of characters called a token. The token is useless to fraudulent actors.
- Global Reach
Global merchants accept many different payment products. Having a system that can automatically recognize a payment product from the account number is beneficial. A smooth transaction increases customer satisfaction making it more likely that the customer will become a repeat user.
Meeting Consumer Demands: A Modern Front Door to Payments
We took a look at Access Worldpay and found that it offers a comprehensive solution that solves the challenges of the dynamic payments industry.
When it came to speed, Access Worldpay delivers modern APIs and user friendly software development kits to quickly showcase new payment options so merchants can take advantage of additional sales channels. By completing API’s in single calls via a single integration point, Worldpay can lowers client costs.
Data is organized in a way that is easily readable by humans and machines. Merchants are able to integrate their payment systems into the gateway in days, not weeks
The cloud based global network provides constant accessibility and reliability. If a data center is unavailable, the request is immediately routed to an alternate server in the network. The result is the highest level of availability to merchants, ensuring that sales are not delayed or lost.
Next we looked at scalability. Understanding that legacy payment platforms can be very hard to alter or scale to meet evolving consumer demands, Worldpay built a new system from scratch.
Notably, the flexible platform design can keep pace with the expanding, dynamic industry. Built for growth with RESTful APIs, Access Worldpay’s payments platform features a compartmentalized, scalable architecture. Modifications can be made and new features can be added without interrupting service with the flip of a switch.
With respect to security, Access Worldpay has a single entry point which handles the routing complexity behind the scenes and allows your business to keep more revenue by opening the door to leading edge security, fraud and loss mitigation solutions.
With the most extensive global reach of any payments processor, Worldpay offers services in over 120 currencies and has a relationship with banks in markets across the world. Unlike their competitors who have to cobble a network together, Worldpay can offer an existing global reach to merchants at lower costs, making Access Worldpay the right option for the largest global businesses.
The Takeaway
Merchants are always looking for ways to improve customer experience and remove obstacles that frustrate consumers and turn them away. Having a smooth checkout process that provides a variety of payment options is essential. Finding the right payments processor to meet the evolving demands and expectations of customers can add to the bottom line.
“Merchants now have multiple sales platforms to align with the needs of today’s hybrid consumer who shops, orders, and pays across in-store, mobile, and e-commerce portals,” added Raymond Pucci, Director of Merchant Services at Mercator Advisory Group. “Now these merchants look to their payment providers to give them solutions that offer scale, shopping platform integration, and cloud-based technology that offers agile and cost effective ways to handle various payment methods and channels.”