What’s important in choosing a payment processor?
Selecting the right payment processor has lot to do with your business type. While price is certainly a prime consideration, merchants should consider other important factors:
Customer Service
Revenue obtained through credit cards might represent a significant portion of your business. Get it wrong, and you could experience crippling effects. Your payment processor’s customer service function acts as an important buffer between your business and the credit card Associations. Does the processor offer 24 x 7 manned or e-mail support? What is the average wait time? Are reports, chargeback handling and transaction details available online? Are there additional fees for any of these services?
Business Fit
Not all processors are created equal. Many processors specialize in certain business sectors or on certain transaction types. Are you selling face-to-face (card-present) in a retail location, or selling in a card not present (CNP) environment like mail order/telephone order (MOTO), or on the Internet? Are you selling a product or a service? Does the processor have experience working with your kind of business? It is important that you select a processor that can demonstrate that it understands your industry.
Ease of Use
Accepting all the major brands means that you may be subject to over a dozen different fee types. From pricing to reporting to the terms of your merchant agreement, it is important that your processor presents an accounting of your transactions in a logical and concise manner. Does the processor offer tiered rates or pass-through pricing? Are reports well formatted and easy to understand? Are you able to drill down to the transaction level or perform complex searches? Be sure to ask for an online reporting demonstration or examples of common paper reports.
Security
A data breach can have profoundly negative effects on your bottom line and can seriously damage your brand. It is your processor’s responsibility to make sure that your payment services are “locked-down” from end to end. Whether you are selling face-to-face or in a CNP environment, be sure to select a processor that has been certified as Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliant.
As with any important vendor, you must perform some level of due diligence with any of your perspective payment processors. Always ask for customer references. If you plan to use a company you are unfamiliar with, it may make sense to contact the Better Business Bureau, or research some of the online scam reporting sites.