While peak seasons will vary per industry, what remains consistent is the high volumes of payment transactions that will occur. When busy periods are happening, software companies need to be confident that their clients won’t experience any downtime.
To prepare for this crucial period, ISVs should have a schedule to ensure that their payment process is optimized and ready for action. The benefits of putting resources towards checkout process optimization include:
- A frictionless payment experience: With a well thought out embedded commerce solution, clients can elevate their customer service by offering various payment options, giving customers the payment flexibility they crave while providing merchant accounts the opportunity to get paid quickly.
- A competitive advantage: Monitoring trends, ensuring secure payments, and rolling out timely updates builds trust with clients.
- Increased revenue: ISVs who partner with a payment processor that offers a revenue sharing program (such as Global Payments Integrated) end up reaping the rewards from high payment volumes during these busy seasons and all year long.
As a trusted ISV, you owe it to your clients to have software functionality that can handle payment transactions efficiently, especially when they’re busy. Consider implementing the following features to improve payment processing during peak periods.
Multiple Payment Options
Merchants who cater to customer payment preferences have a better chance of increasing sales and loyalty to their business. ISVs can do this by offering numerous types of payment options that span between traditional and digital.
Traditional payment options include cash, checks, credit, and debit cards. Newer payment methods include digital wallets, contactless cards, and other touchless payments such as card-on-file and recurring payments.
Gift Card Functionality
Software that includes gift card functionality is advantageous. First, consumers love receiving and redeeming them. Second, they’re a good marketing strategy that helps businesses with cash flow and encourages customer loyalty. Gift cards are also flexible in that they have a physical form (plastic cards) and a digital form, which can either be emailed or saved in a digital wallet.
When ISVs integrate gift card functionality into their software, they enable businesses to take advantage of an additional revenue source. Those that partner with Global Payments Integrated can accommodate any gift card provider, allowing merchants to maintain their current gift card program if they want.
Additionally, if merchants are looking to implement or change their gift card program, ISVs can leverage our in-house gift card team to provide design services, employee training, and product support.
Secure Payment Processing
Higher payment volumes are a great outcome, but one unfortunate side effect is an increased chance for fraud. Fraudulent payments ultimately end up hurting businesses, as it’s difficult to challenge any credit card chargebacks that result from them.
To minimize fraud, ISVs should partner with payment processing services that are serious about security. Look for one that actively maintains PCI compliance, so your merchants are protected from data breaches.
What do secure payments look like in practice? Including EMV chip card functionality offers more protection than those still relying on magnetic stripe (“magstripe”) payments. When an EMV transaction occurs, a unique cryptographic code is created for every transaction. The code effectively replaces sensitive data, protecting the cardholder from fraudulent transactions.
Other recommended security solutions include encryption and tokenization.
Alternative Financing
Alternative financing, or paying by installments, is gaining popularity in the e-Commerce space. Consumers have started taking advantage of this new online payment method involving short-term loans at the point-of-sale (POS). This offers customers the opportunity to purchase a product now and pay later, in installments.
Planning for the Peak
If your target industry’s busy season happens to fall outside of the year-end holidays, now could be the time to start implementing fixes and enhancing payment functionality, making merchants ready to process when their peak season does arrive.
Remember:
- It’s never too early to prepare. Setting time weeks or months in advance to test functionality and fix errors along the way makes it less stressful once the first day of peak season arrives.
- Maintain a regular schedule for testing payment security. Look for internal and external vulnerabilities around your payment process quarterly, in addition to any time a significant network change happens.
- Work with payment processing companies that make the peak easier. At Global Payments Integrated, we have dedicated teams that can support software developers looking to enhance their product offerings through payments.
Whether you’re looking for a payment security solution, the opportunity to monetize your payments, or want to stay on-trend, we are here to help. Contact us to get started.
Michelle Mondonedo
Brand Marketing Manager
