Whether you plan to take credit card payments face to face, over the phone, or on the internet, you must first establish a relationship with a reputable merchant services provider. This is the company that should provide you with everything you’ll need to seamlessly accept debit and credit cards from your customers, while safely collecting cardholder data from your point-of-sale system’s card reader, 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.
So, what is an all-in-one provider?
As the name implies, this type of merchant account provider does everything. They supply you with a full menu of payment-related services, including the following options:
- A gateway to securely send a customer’s payment information to and from the payment networks in a matter of moments.
- Cutting-edge software solutions that allow a business’s ecommerce platform, payment gateway, shopping cart, accounting, and other software to all work together seamlessly.
- Online payment portals to facilitate easy customer payments.
- Up-to-date data security, made possible by certified point-to-point encryption, the very latest in tokenization, and other systems that comply with payment card industry data security standards (PCI DSS).
- Several payment options, including the ability to take your business international by accepting multiple currencies.
- High-quality, accessible customer service.
When all of these features are combined, you have a merchant services provider that can single-handedly meet all of your needs.
Why choose an all-in-one merchant services provider
Bundling these services into a stand-alone package can bring about many benefits for your business. These advantages include the following:
- Seamless integration. Once you carefully choose the company that is right for your business, it should be well-positioned to help you meet all of your payment needs. Therefore, you won’t need to shop separately for each individual component, saving you time.
- Bundling all of your services together is significantly more affordable, saving you money.
- Combining payment capabilities makes complying with industry, state, and federal data security and privacy regulations and unraveling red tape much easier.
- Smoother more streamlined overall operations, due to your anytime access to easy-to-understand data about your customers, employees, inventory, and chargebacks.
- 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 your staff more time to focus on what you do best: Growing your business.
- More responsive customer support. When all of your services are in one ecosystem, you can get the help you need from one source when problems arise. That will lead to faster and more effective solutions that can get you back to business as quickly as possible.
- Scalability. You may be a “small” business today, but we’re guessing you’ve got big plans. That’s why you want a merchant provider who has the capability to grow right along with you. While an all-in-one vendor will likely offer a variety of options, not every solution will be relevant to you right now. Even so, those solutions will be available to you should your needs evolve in the future, which if COVID taught is anything, will no doubt one day be the case.
As an entrepreneur, you must juggle numerous tasks and responsibilities, including everything that is involved with securely 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 partner in place, your business will be well-positioned to grow and flourish both now...and well into the future.
