As an ISV, providing the greatest value to your customers is key to differentiating from your competition and creating “sticky” customers. This means delivering the tools necessary to streamline workflows, lower labor costs, holistically view overall financial health, and more—all through a single application. By integrating payments into your software, you can make it simple for users to invoice customers and collect electronic payments from wherever business takes them—online, in-store, or on-location, all while functioning more efficiently.
Here’s everything you need to know about how integrated payments technology empowers ISVs to deliver outstanding customer experiences.
Why are Integrated Payments a Key Feature to a Market Competitive Software Solution?
Today, businesses have two choices when it comes to electronic payment acceptance: leverage a fully integrated solution where payment technology is a native part of their business management software application, or opt for a standalone payment acceptance solution such as a countertop point-of-sale (POS) device or virtual terminal.
While businesses of all sizes certainly benefit from the simplicity an all-in-one solution brings, managing payments using a non-integrated, disparate system is only an option for the smallest of merchants. From the manual effort required to the risk exposure of data entry errors, even those happy with this type of solution quickly outgrow this option.
Therefore, as a software provider, an integrated payment solution is needed to compete (and stay relevant) in today’s market.
How Integrated Payments Benefit Merchants
Incorporating integrated payments into your software application can help your customers manage thriving businesses and scale more quickly. Here’s how:
- Reduce Soft Costs by Eliminating Manual Processes
Soft costs, although typically overlooked, can be a major expense for a business. These include time spent on manual processes like paying bills or employee scheduling, as well as payment functions like manual invoicing and reconciling payment data between systems.
For example, each time an employee collects payment on an invoice over the phone, they waste an average of seven minutes on that task. Assuming 100 invoices per week, 700 minutes—or 11.6 hours—is wasted, serving as a human credit card terminal.
Using a centralized software application to manage (and automate) billing and collect payments (credit card and ACH) saves hours every week which will translate into lower labor costs and serious cash flow improvements, fueling growth and profitability. By providing customers with functionality that removes manual processes, software providers help customers reduce the soft costs associated with operations.
- Improved Payment Card Security
By partnering with a PCI DSS-validated payment processor to power your payment application, your customers will reap the downstream benefits of improved payment data security. Technologies like point-to-point encryption (P2PE) and tokenization—which protect both cardholder data in-flight and at-rest from bad actors—do wonders to protect against cardholder data breaches which are costly and can result in fines, penalties, and loss of payment card acceptance privileges, along with irreversible reputational consequences for merchants. With data breaches continuing to plague both business operators and consumers with just over 300 million people affected in 2020 alone, software providers can deliver real value by delivering solutions that keep merchants and their customers safe.
- Streamline Operations
When merchants leverage an integrated billing and payment acceptance solution, manual reconciliation resulting from working between systems becomes a thing of the past. Staff members no longer spend time entering transaction data manually into business management software, a process synonymous with data entry errors. Because all financial data resides in one location, reporting is also vastly improved. Merchants have clear visibility into their overall financial situation along with the supporting detail which results in better decision-making related to managing cashflow, and ultimately helps maximize profitability.
Conclusion
For a software provider, integrated payments present an incredible opportunity. By educating customers (and prospects) on the true value your integrated payment solution delivers, you’ll grow market share, improve customer adoption through your existing customer base, and improve retention. And, as a result, fully monetize payment processing.
Work With Paya
Whether you are looking to add an integrated payment solution for the first time, or if your payments integration could use an upgrade, we’d love to talk.
Software providers choose Paya because of our innovative payment solutions that empower our clients and partners to drive exceptional commerce experiences. We leverage best-in-class technologies to address today’s needs and tomorrow’s opportunities. Our simple, straightforward yet thoughtfully designed programs make strong growth and profitability possible. Come see why over 100,000 customers, across 2,000 plus industry partners trust Paya to power their payments.