4 must have features in a Credit card processing software for businesses
1) Credit card processing software with support for level 2 and 3 transactions
Credit card interchange fees are usually high.The interchange fee could be anywhere between 2.5 to 3 %This is one of the reasons many businesses are moving to ACH payments in US.ACH payments service provided by most banks costs almost nothing !
Switching to ACH payments completely won’t be an easy option for most businesses as their current customers might be still paying them through credit cards.
Solution : Accept credit card payments using a credit card processing software that sends commercial level 2 and commercial level 3 info to your processor.
Commercial level 2 information mainly consists of the header level information in any invoice for eg: order number , order date ,Customer address ,shipping address etc
Commercial level 3 information mainly consists of line item level information such as the product names , product codes ,quantity , unit price etc
By including level 2 and 3 information your company will be able to achieve savings in interchange fee of upto 1% !
2) Credit card processing software with payment reconciliation
Payment reconciliation with your other applications /ERP’s is a must have feature in a B2B payments software .Your ERP data should be in sync with the software you will be using to accept credit card payments
If the data is not in sync you will end up with a broken receivables process where your collections team might end up calling customers who had already paid your invoices.
The last thing you want to do is annoy your customers who are paying on time in your business
3) Support for Authorization and late capture
Imagine you are working with a new customer who demands a 30 days credit period in the first order itself
Most businesses would avoid taking a credit risk (unless it is a well-known customer)Credit card processors allow merchants to block a customer’s funds for a future payment. This method is called “Authorization” .
By doing an Authorization the processor will be able to create a virtual block on you customer’s bank account without actually making the transfer.
After 30 days your business can then trigger a capture request which will ensure that the money gets transferred to your business bank account.
Authorization and late capture may not be useful tool for all businesses but it can be an effective tool if used well
4) Saved cards
Let’s be frank no one wants to take the pain to enter a 16 digit credit card number every time they need to make a payment.
By selecting a software that allows your customer to save their cards securely you will be enabling them to pay you easily !