Whether you take credit card payments face to face, over the phone, or on the internet, you must establish a relationship with a merchant services provider. This company provides you with all you need to accept debit and credit cards from your customers by collecting cardholder data from your point of sale system, connecting to your acquiring bank, and verifying and authorizing the purchase. Because not all merchant payment providers are alike, it’s time to understand why it makes sense to choose an all-in-one option.
What is an all-in-one provider?
As the name implies, this type of merchant account provider does everything. They furnish you with the full menu of payment-related services.
- A payment gateway to securely send a customer’s payment information to and from the payment networks.
- Software solutions that allow your ecommerce platform, payment gateway, shopping cart, and accounting software to work seamlessly together.
- Online payment portals to facilitate easy customer payments.
- Data security made possible by encryption, tokenization, and other systems that comply with payment card industry data security standards (PCI DSS).
- Acceptance for all payment types, including the ability to accept multiple currencies and to accept payments virtually.
- Responsive customer service.
When all of these features are combined, you have a merchant services provider that can be a true partner to you and help grow your business.
Why choose an all-in-one merchant services provider.
Bundling services into a stand-alone package can bring many benefits to your business. These advantages include the following:
- Seamless integration. Once you carefully choose the company that is right for your business, you won’t need to shop separately for each individual component.
- Maximum affordability. Tying all of your services together makes more financial sense.
- Simplified compliance. Combining payment capabilities makes adhering to industry, state, and federal data security and privacy regulations easier.
- Smoother operations. Access integrated, detailed data about all of your payment sources in real time.
- Enhanced efficiency. With all of your information and reports in one place, you can automate some of your processes and data entry, giving you and more staff more time to do what you do best: Grow your business.
- Streamlined customer support. When all of your services are in one ecosystem, you can get the help you need more easily when problems arise. Having a single point of contact leads to faster and more effective solutions that can get you up and running more quickly.
- Better scalability. You might be starting small today, but you want a merchant provider that can grow right along with your business. An all-in-one vendor will offer a robust suite of options, not every one of which may be relevant to you right now. Even so, they will be available to you should your needs evolve in the future.
As a business owner, you must juggle numerous tasks and responsibilities, including everything that is involved in securely and seamlessly accepting customers’ payments. Fortunately, an all-in-one merchant account provider can make the process of accepting credit and debit cards convenient, easy, and affordable. With this key element of your business in place, you’ll be better positioned to grow and flourish now and well into the future.
