The 10 Payment Platform Provider “Must Haves”
The best payment platform providers (like Tilled) tick several boxes that help ISVs get the most out of payment processing.
There are major benefits to be had by accepting payments through your core B2B software, but only if you work with the right payments provider. Certain providers have attributes that help ISVs get more out of their payment offering than others, and knowing what those characteristics are can help you choose the right one. Check out the following payment provider ‘must haves’ when choosing a new solution:
1. Payment Acceptance: Offering merchants a seamless omnichannel payment experience can help distinguish your B2B software from the competition. To that end, it’s essential to choose a provider that allows you to support card-present payments, subscriptions, and hosted payments, as well as provide a virtual terminal and offer international coverage.
At Tilled, we do it all. For example, our Subscriptions API makes it easy to get started with recurring payments quickly by allowing your customers to set up weekly, monthly, and annual payment schedules that can be paused at any time. We also offer hosted payments, which allow users to generate one-time payment links via the Tilled console and share them with their customers. These links allow you and your merchants to collect payments without having to build a payments page yourself.
2. Interchange Plus Pricing: Find a provider that offers interchange plus pricing, as it’s the most transparent, cost-effective form of merchant account pricing. Unlike traditional tiered pricing or flat-rate pricing, interchange plus pricing charges the actual cost to process a payment (interchange) plus a transaction fee on top of that cost. You can qualify for the lowest rate for every transaction with this structure, as the processor passes the interchange fees directly through to your business and then adds a fixed markup to that rate.
3. Security & Compliance: Your payments provider should be able to provide top-notch security features such as encryption, tokenization, and fraud detection to ensure secure transactions, as well as comply with all relevant regulations such as PCI, DSS, and GDPR. They also should provide this for no additional fee. Tilled, for example, is PCI Level 1 certified and does not charge monthly fees to cover PCI compliance.
4. Revenue Sharing Program: Does the provider offer a revenue share program? A revenue share makes it easy to monetize your payments by generating commissions from every successful merchant transaction. Depending on your total processing volume, a healthy revenue share (like Tilled’s standard 66% rev share) can add a significant new revenue stream to your business and increase your bottom line drastically.
5. Easy to Implement APIs: A provider that offers Modern APIs and SDKs can make it very easy to integrate payments with a rapid turnaround time. Tilled has an average integration time of two weeks, though our record timeline was just four days! The Tilled Tech Docs are also always being updated, versus a legacy processor who likely hasn’t updated their APIs in a decade.
6. Customer Support: Whoever you select as a provider should offer excellent customer support to help you with any issues or questions you may have. And we don’t mean 24/7 chatbots. Many providers, like Tilled, offer human support so that you can get answers about your account in a timely manner.
7. Reporting: Your provider should provide you with reports and analytics to track merchant performance, monitor financial health, and identify trends. Tilled makes it easy for users to quickly download the following types of reports directly from the Tilled consoles:
-
- Payments Report
- Payouts Report
- Merchant Fees Report
- Processing Summary Report
7a. Dispute and Chargeback Management: Check if the provider offers in-depth reporting around disputes. Tilled does this, while also offering users the ability to submit evidence in response to disputes.
8. Built-In Marketing Services: Find a provider that will help you market your new payment solution to merchants. At Tilled, We offer our ISV pre-built and custom marketing services to help you educate merchants on your payment solution, convert them, and drive total processing volume. We will even go to events to support your team’s sales efforts. There is no need for your team to be payments experts.
9. White-Label Functionality: As your business grows, it will become increasingly important to be able to offer a customized and branded payment experience.Using Tilled’s white-label functionality, ISVs can easily add their branding and logos to their Tilled console and Merchant Applications. As a result, a payment experience that matches their core business.
10. Flexible Billing and Pricing Options: The right provider should be able to make adjustments aligned with your business’s needs. At Tilled, we understand that no two businesses are alike, which is why our pricing templates and flexible billing allow for adaptation and customization. Our highly flexible billing solution empowers ISVs to drive pricing with modern tech tools, such as pricing templates and modern APIs.
Now that you have a solid understanding of what you can, and should, be expecting out of your payment platform provider, are you considering a switch? If you feel like you’re struggling more than winning with your current provider, this might be your sign to move on. Tilled delivers on all of the must-haves listed above, and our sales team is ready (and happy) to help answer any questions you may have about our PayFac-as-a-Service solution!
