Reduce the Cost of Accepting Online Payments
For many companies that do business online – most notably small to mid-sized businesses – accepting payments from customers comes at a high price. But there are things that can be done to help ease the financial burden of doing business.
Use a single IT interface to handle all payments (even those originate from foreign countries), which can reduce upfront and continuing IT expenses. One of the easiest ways to do this is setting up a single IT interface with a payment service provider, which in turn connects with all the banks and forms of payment on behalf of the merchant.
Streamline all payment operations and management processes. Many merchants are still manually managing payment reconciliation, reporting, and payment disputes, which can be costly considering how much time each of those office tasks takes to complete. Utilize tools and resources provided through your payment services provider that allow you to automate and streamline these processes.
Opt for a payment services provider that enables you to use multiple banks instead of being contracted to use just one. This can result in lower bank fees and the ability to change banks if you want.
Accept methods of payment with inherently low risk and set fees. For example, allowing real-time bank transfers as a form of payment can reduce a merchant’s risk of costly credit card chargebacks. In addition, forms of payment site set fees are typically less expensive than those that charge a set percentage (e.g. 3 percent) of a total transaction cost.
Use fraud prevention tools. According to the Internet Crime Compliant Center, fraud complaints grew more than 33 percent in 2009 when compared to 2007. Every year, credit card costs online merchants millions of dollars. Implementing fraud prevention tools is imperative to not only help detect fraudulent transactions your site, but to reduce the skyrocketing costs of chargebacks and other fees associated with fraud as well. Look for payment services that offer integrated fraud prevention tools that can maximize the security and validity of each transaction completed on the site and subsequently help reduce fraud losses without negatively impacting your total sales volume.
