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Payment processors are more than just a middleman between you and your customers. Merchants who treat payment processing as simply a means of money transfer lose out on a lot of value by not understanding and searching for useful payment processing features offered by high-quality providers. As a result, they end up paying the same money for subpar service or even paying for a quality one but never leveraging half of the value their processor could offer.
In this guide, we’ll go over the following:
- Payment processing features
- Their benefits
- How to take advantage of them
Let’s dive in and discover the value that savvy business leaders can extract from their merchant account.
Payment Processing Features
The most common value-added features that payment processors offer are fairly ubiquitous, with more premium providers offering additional advanced payment processing features. Specialist processors offer even more, especially for their target markets (like high-risk industries).
The table below breaks down what should be bare minimum expectations, what features are more advanced and truly add value, and what features you’ll likely only find with high-quality specialist processors:
While smaller merchants that are just getting started may be able to get by with the most basic possible payment processing capabilities, growth-focused businesses stand to benefit quite a bit from investing in higher-shelf providers. Midsize and enterprise businesses stand to save a lot of money working with premium/specialist processors, and those in high-risk industries may actually need a specialist if they want to maintain a healthy merchant account long-term.
Benefits of Better Payment Processing Capabilities
Knowing what payment processing features separate a basic processor from a higher-quality one is only useful when you understand what your business can gain from leveraging them. Throughout our experience working with merchants across countless industries, the most common benefits they’ve reported are:
- Higher Sales Volume: Support for a wider variety of payment methods and simplified payment through convenient, attractive API integrations decrease transactional friction and make it faster and easier for customers to make purchases.
- Reduced Liability: Better security protocols like PCI-DSS and more advanced identity verification methods reduce the risk of costly data breaches and fraud, protecting both the merchant and their customers.
- Lower Chargeback/Fraud Rates: Better identity verification and more advanced chargeback and fraud protection reduce the rates of both and make it easier to dispute illegitimate chargebacks. This not only saves money but can also be the difference between a healthy merchant account and a frozen or terminated one.
- Faster, More Effective Merchant Support: Dedicated account managers ensure that merchants' issues are handled in a timely manner, and they’re never left wondering when action will be taken.
These benefits improve the bottom lines of businesses while also improving their confidence that payment processing will never present an obstacle to their growth.
Specialty Payment Processing Features with Seamless Chex
Seamless Chex is an experienced high-risk payment processor that specializes in purpose-driven features like chargeback management tools and fraud protection. Our 99.1% approval rate and comprehensive high-risk industry list mean businesses of nearly all industries and sizes can be confident in our support. We work to truly understand your business from the outset, with upfront underwriting and individualized payment schedules designed to work for each client’s market and business cycle.
To learn more about payment processing features, contact us today.
