Now more than ever, consumers are demanding more payment options, causing merchants to turn to independent sales organizations (ISOs) to help cut through the payments clutter. ISOs who offer a full spectrum of payment options can capitalize on that demand. The question is, which payments partner should an ISO choose?
ISOs have a very specific menu of needs, and it’s rare to find them all in one place. Typically, ISOs are looking for:
Let’s examine each expectation in depth.
ISOs tend to choose payment partners that offer a competitive revenue share with reasonable buy rates for some of the key costs such as transaction fee or basis point costs, monthly fees, and PCI. If an ISO can’t price above those costs and remain a competitive option for merchants, they’ll find another payments partner.
At Payroc, we offer a competitive agreement which gets enhanced by our unique payment solutions that offer higher margin opportunities for ISOs. An example is our RewardPay and ConsumerChoice technology that allows our clients to realize more revenue in creative and compliant ways, as a result of passing along processing fees onto cardholders or other innovative options. In fact, some of our ISOs work with us strictly to take advantage of those capabilities.
While ISOs have their own infrastructure to support merchants and their own lines, they also need a responsive support organization to accomplish their goals. Whether it’s in one office or across the entire organization, ISOs need to make sure they have the right support in place – from technical to product to sales.
With a single point of contact, ISOs can get their questions answered immediately. When you consider that most ISOs already work with processors that don’t prioritize a quality customer experience, offering that one point of contact is a real differentiator and something that Payroc delivers.
We assign each ISO a partner manager to coordinate all activities, from integration to onboarding through the life of the relationship. This saves the ISO from having to find the right person to answer their questions. We also offer Payroc Insights, a portal to enable the ISO to manage their portfolio and new applications. This helps the ISO to reduce potential administrative costs. In addition to operational support, the ISO using Payroc has access to marketing, product, and integration support resources.
The demand for omnichannel payments solutions is also driving ISOs to look for additional payment partners. They may be able to provide standard solutions to their merchants through traditional processors, but sophisticated solutions for unique verticals are another challenge.
Payroc offers products that truly disrupt the payments landscape and can accommodate mobile wallets, tap to phone, and biometrics. Plus, our flexible infrastructure makes it easy for our solutions to adapt to next-generation payment solutions as they become available. What’s more, we can white label our solutions to make them appear part of the registered ISO’s total package of payment options.
In many cases, ISOs have approached Payroc because they were struggling with their current processor from a risk and underwriting standpoint. For many processors, underwriting and risk management is not transparent, and it is difficult to get answers or address expectations. The fact that Payroc is both an acquirer and an underwriter provides ISOs with direct access to an underwriting team to approve and onboard most merchants within a day.
Payroc can also accommodate merchant boarding in countries like Canada, the United Kingdom, and Ireland – something that many other processors also cannot handle. Our multinational focus and ability to process currency conversions through third-party partners make Payroc a unique payments partner. As we continue to expand our organization and partners, we’ll be able to offer even more multinational and cross-border payment processing.
Another important distinction for ISOs is the level of technology and ease of integration that a payments partner offers. ISOs engage with software partners, POS partners, payment processors, and other partners that all need to integrate and work seamlessly together. At Payroc, our ability to enable those integrations easily is a critical advantage.
Equally important are the merchant boarding experience and reporting that help attract and retain merchants, as well as measure revenue and value. We also offer data security that assures ISOs their merchants can more simply achieve PCI certification, and protection from fraudulent transactions with real-time transaction analysis.
In some cases, we’ve worked with ISOs who had a software partner or independent software vendor (ISV) that needed assistance in developing a complex solution to address a niche merchant market. Our deep bench of developers and technology experts can customize existing APIs to facilitate the integration work that was required.
And now that our suite of APIs has been released, we can accommodate virtually any channel and payment solution:
Our merchant account boarding allows ISVs and ISOs to collect all pertinent information about each merchant in a digital fashion, submit that information through our API, get a digital signature, and provision that account to have it up and ready for processing quickly.
Our platform is designed to provide a wide range of payment services, including credit, debit, and ACH.
We offer dynamic funding capabilities. By allowing flexibility in funding instructions, the ISV and ISO can create value within their software. For example, one of our partners develops solutions for race management — triathlons and marathons — where many of the registrations involve nonprofit donations. Their solutions need to settle funds to both the merchant and the third party. The process sends the majority of the registration to the race management company, a portion to the charity, and the rest to the ISV.
Our reporting API pushes that settlement information so ISVs and ISO’s can report within their own software. That includes the deposits. With this API, they can build that reporting into their own software and their merchant never needs to leave the software. They have all the capability and all the functionality to reconcile and everything else within the software for all their payments.
Whether your company is an ISO or ISV, Payroc offers flexibility, ease of integration, seamless onboarding, and single-channel support that will set your business up for success. The more your business can leverage the product solutions and technical innovations that a payments partner like Payroc offers, the more likely your company will realize greater revenues, better merchant services, more niche product offerings and superior support. Payroc offers a win-win for ISOs and their merchants.
For more information about how your company can take advantage of Payroc’s services and products, contact our team today.