Business customers win in credit card processing partnerships

Credit card processing – whether in a store, by phone or through a website -- is an essential element of business today. In fact, U.S. consumers have embraced credit card usage to the tune of $2 trillion a year. With increasing credit card fraud and additional compliance requirements, corporations and business owners don’t always know how to easily assimilate credit cards into their business.

“Overall, the take away for me, is that if you build a solution that delivers real value to the customer, you wind up with happy customers”
-Scott Davisson, MYOB US Managing Partner

A great partnership can be the answer. Partnering with a successful credit card processing partner, such as ACH Direct, can help companies’ IT departments, software and web developers easily jump over these hurdles to provide safe, secure and compliant electronic payments.

One good example is popular business accounting software provider MYOB US, who offers an easy solution to its customers. By integrating software with ACH Direct, MYOB US Managing Partner Scott Davisson found they could offer customers more servicing options and better customer service.

“In 2003, we made the decision to bring our customers a better, more integrated solution,” Davisson said. “The product development teams for both companies worked very closely to tightly integrate the credit card processing functionality into our product line. Now a customer can go into the software and transact their purchases without a terminal. It’s really powerful.”

If merchants and developers want a safe, secure, electronic payments solution without the hassle of compliance, security and fraud protection, and added management benefits, software integration with a credit processor such as ACH Direct might be the answer.

With one integration through ACH Direct’s Payments Gateway, the software connects to virtually all major credit card processors, including VISA/MasterCard, American Express, Discover and JCB. Plus, merchants have access to all major debit card networks and a variety of payment methods such as electronic check and bill pay.

ACH Direct’s PCI-certified processing center is designed for maximum availability, featuring a network of high-capacity, load-balanced transaction processors with redundant connectivity.

Merchants with the resources for a custom integration can implement a product such as ACH Direct’s Advance Gateway Interface (AGI). Using this integration, merchants control the customer experience from start to finish, and ACH Direct’s role is transparent.

Through this integrated process, MYOB’s users can provide their customers the ability to pay by most major credit cards, an easier payment system and 24/7 payment availability – plus the ability to record credit card sales, debits and voids directly through their MYOB software. In addition, customers using this product can take advantage of ACH Direct’s VirtualTerminal™ to simplify recurring payments.

“Businesses are always looking for the best, easiest and most cost-effective way to do business,” Davisson noted. “What we’ve seen is that even if they already accept credit cards through another processor, they are willing to change processors because of the single-step process of authorizing the credit cards and recording the invoices directly. Saving time by not having to rekey data is a tangible benefit that they instantly understand. Everyone is happy.”

Through another ACH Direct product called Secure Web Pay (SWP), merchants can easily add credit card processing to their websites without sophisticated integration. This is a great way for businesses with minimal technology personnel to add an easy way to accept credit card payments online.

Reporting and management is a much easier task through either AGI or SWP. Merchants can view a secure and detailed online record of transactions; download transaction history into various file formats, such as Excel, CVS, QuickBooks®, XML and MYOB; and automatically obtain payment settlement reports, including items declined or rejected, to reconcile to a bank statement.

In addition, a merchant’s system will automatically close out batch transactions, allowing immediate capture of funds and eliminating the need for the manual end-of-day batch close-out. Multiple users can be given individual levels of access so employees can complete necessary tasks without having access to extraneous features.

Other great tools are the search feature allowing an easy way to find a particular transaction or subset of transactions, and using VirtualTerminal™ to reverse, void or refund payments.

Customer service is shared by the merchant and ACH Direct. For example, MYOB shares about 2,000 customers with this product and also shares the customer service.

“We work very closely with ACH Direct from a customer care standpoint,” Davisson remarked. “When we acquire a customer, we jointly share in support and strive to deliver the best customer experience possible. As with most businesses, an important measure of success is customer retention and word of mouth referrals.”

Davisson continued, “Overall, the take away for me, is that if you build a solution that delivers real value to the customer, you wind up with happy customers.”

Like MYOB, any business ranging in size from small to global can maximize payments capabilities by partnering with ACH Direct. With ACH Direct’s easily implemented solutions for adding or integrating electronic payments functionality, more companies than ever are tapping into the $2 trillion pool that is today’s online credit card processing market.