merchant services CRM Archives - Merchant Account & E Commerce Payment Processing Insights

April 23, 2019

An Introduction To BAMS’ Popular E-Commerce Integrations

We now live in a digital world, and online shopping has become king. A 2018 study by NPR found that an astounding 75% of Americans have purchased something online, and every year consumers shift more and more of their shopping to the web. As the leader in electronic payments, we at BAMS understand how important it is for our partners to have strong, stable e-commerce platforms, and as a result, we’ve designed BAMS to integrate with all of the most popular payment gateways, online checkout solutions, and fully-featured e-commerce platforms. Here are just a few of the many e-commerce integrations available through BAMS.

Authorize.Net

Authorize.Net is the world’s largest online payment gateway, allowing merchants to accept e-commerce payments with credit cards, ACH eChecks, PayPal, ApplePay, and more. Now owned by Visa, it offers outstanding security and fraud protection and an extensive list of third-party integrations. Authotize.Net also offers streamlined single-click payment options designed to enable transactions like charity donations to be made with a minimal headache for the end-user.

Magento

Magento is an open-source e-commerce platform owned by Adobe that has been used by over 250,000 online stores worldwide. Magento is one of the oldest players in e-commerce solutions, and its availability as a one-click install from a number of major hosting providers has aided its popularity. Like Authorize.Net, there is an enormous list of third-party applications that can be easily integrated with Magento stores to expand their functionality.

CyberSource

CyberSource is another e-commerce payment system owned by Visa, used by 400,000 merchants all over the world. It provides secure online checkout functionality to online stores, enabling them to accept major credit cards, as well as third-party solutions like PayPal. Its Decision Manager product is the world’s largest fraud detection system, processing and analyzing data from over 68 billion transactions annually.

BigCommerce

BigCommerce is a Texas-based e-commerce company offering online shopping products for websites, blogs, and social media applications like Instagram and Facebook. BigCommerce is highly scalable and offers hundreds of built-in features users can employ right out of the box without having to turn to third-party plugins. That scalability has made BigCommerce the number one eCommerce platform for businesses that bring in $1 million or more in sales each year, and it’s currently used by world-class brands like Toyota, Gibson guitars, and more.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a fully-featured e-commerce plugin specifically designed to operate with the WordPress content management system. Thanks to the widespread use of WordPress, WooCommerce has grown into one of the web’s most popular e-commerce solutions, boasting over 64,000,000 downloads. In addition to e-commerce and shopping cart functionality, WooCommerce offers a full suite of website themes, allowing users to build professional online stores using nothing but the WooCommerce platform and WordPress.

Volusion

Volusion is an all-in-one e-commerce platform that allows users to design fully-functional e-commerce websites from scratch using a suite of built-in tools and modules. It essentially acts as a content management system and e-commerce platform in one, allowing users to build out their online stores page by page, skin them with professionally designed themes, and then populate the shopping areas with all the flexibility and functionality required. In addition to its store and shopping cart features, it also includes built-in marketing tools like search engine optimization and social integration.

Our long list of popular e-commerce integrations means that when you partner with us for your merchant account, you’ll be able to seamlessly integrate BAMS with your existing e-commerce solutions without having to worry about the hassle of changing your checkout process, your store setup, or your users’ experience. Contact us today to find out how BAMS can help you save money and streamline your online payment processing right away!

April 19, 2019

How Your Business Can Protect Itself Against Chargebacks

Chargebacks are an unfortunate reality of accepting credit card payments, but they aren’t something businesses have to lie down and accept without a fight. Some chargebacks are completely legitimate, like cases where a purchase was made fraudulently by a third party. But many chargebacks are fraudulent, frivolous, or abuses of the system. In those cases, there is no reason for a company to accept losing the revenue, the product, and the additional chargeback penalty, and fighting back is in order.

Preventing Chargebacks

The first step in chargeback defense is to work proactively to stop them from happening in the first place. While merchants can’t prevent abusive or fraudulent chargeback requests, they can take steps to help minimize legitimate chargebacks.

Make it clear where the credit card charges are coming from:

One of the most common causes of chargeback requests is customers checking their statements and finding unfamiliar purchases. Worried about potential fraud, they then contact their card issuer and attempt to stop the payment. Sometimes this happens due to legitimate fraud, but many times it’s simply a matter of the customer not recognizing the payment descriptor – the name shown alongside the transaction amount. It’s incredibly important that merchants make themselves easy to recognize by using descriptors that match their branding rather than numbered company names or parent corporations.

Ensure customer complaints are taken care of quickly:

Of all the valid reasons major credit card companies accept chargebacks for, a number of them relate to unsatisfied customers. Unreceived orders, products that don’t match their description, defective merchandise, and misrepresented purchase terms are a few of the many reasons customers can legitimately file a chargeback. The best way to defend against consumer disputes is to take care of them with good customer service before they ever reach the chargeback stage. Addressing customer concerns quickly and professionally, and issuing refunds where appropriate, is a far better route to take than risking getting nailed with a chargeback.

Fighting Chargebacks

When chargebacks do come in, it’s extremely important that businesses handle them quickly and put up as strong a defense as possible to avoid the negative implication with card issuers and the hefty penalties, which can reach as high as $100 per instance. Successfully doing so comes down to understanding the system and knowing how and when to fight back.

The best response is a timely response:

A chargeback that doesn’t receive a response is a guaranteed loss, and waiting too long to respond isn’t much better. There are strict deadlines that merchants have to meet in filing their chargeback responses, and missing even one of them renders the entire process moot. Arguably the most important factor in filing a timely response is to find out about chargebacks as soon as possible. Some payment processors notify merchants of disputes by mail, which is slow and ineffective. Others, like BAMS, use SMS notifications to alert merchants as soon as a chargeback or retrieval request is filed. That speedy notification is invaluable when it comes to getting a strong defense filed in time.

Know the codes:

Each card issuer has its own set of criteria for what it considers a valid chargeback. Those reasons are managed using a set of codes, and every chargeback request will come with an associated code identifying the reason for the dispute. Understanding what those codes represent is key to filing a valid chargeback defense, so merchants absolutely need to be able to decipher them. Visa’s codes, for instance, are laid out in the Dispute Management Guidelines for Visa Merchants, and cover four major areas – fraud, authorization, processing errors, and consumer disputes.

One of the best ways to avoid losses from chargebacks is to partner with a payment processor that understands how serious a concern they are for businesses and offers tools to help mitigate and manage them. BAMS offers a full suite of chargeback tools, including SMS notifications, an online dispute management platform, Verifi integration, zero-liability chargeback assurances, and more.

Contact us today to find out how payment processing with BAMS can help protect your business against unnecessary losses from chargebacks.

April 17, 2019

TurboApp – IRIS CRM’s Merchant-Boarding Secret Weapon

All BAMS customers receive full access to IRIS CRM, one of the most powerful customer resource management platforms currently available on the market. IRIS CRM provides a full suite of tools that enable companies to manage all aspects of their operations, from communications to leads and prospecting, to sales, to payments, and beyond.

One of IRIS CRM’s most important features is TurboApp, a built-in application designed specifically for independent sales organizations looking to streamline their merchant boarding. With TurboApp, what was once an involved process requiring large amounts of manual entry can now be almost completely automated, allowing users to board new merchants far more efficiently than ever before.

How Does TurboApp Work?

TurboApp integrates directly with the major front-end providers so that the data from merchant applications entered into the IRIS CRM system can be passed right through, all from within the CRM. That’s a revolutionary advancement because it removes the time-consuming step of having to manually process a merchant’s application and then manually transfer all of the relevant information over into an application portal.

Thanks to IRIS CRM’s built-in eSignature functionality, applications are ready to go once they’re passed through to TurboApp, and all an agent has to do is upload the relevant attachments and check over the data to ensure there aren’t any errors.

TurboApp also allows boarding of multi-location merchants from within a single application. Each location generates its own tab within the overall merchant application, allowing agents to follow the same simple steps as they would for a single-location application and eliminating the time-consuming process of handling data individually for each separate place.

TurboApp integrates with all of the leading front-end solution providers, including First Data Omaha, First Data North, Vantiv, Priority, Pivotal, iPayment, and a number of others. No matter which processor an application is being boarded to, TurboApp allows it all to be done in a matter of a few clicks.

The Many Benefits of Using TurboApp for Merchant Loading

The most obvious benefit to TurboApp is the speed with which it allows agents to board new merchants. By eliminating most of the manual work traditionally involved in merchant boarding, TurboApp allows the process to be completed four to seven times faster. That means agents waste less of their time each day on busy work, and can spend more focusing on signing up new accounts and bringing in revenues.

The other major benefit of TurboApp is the promotion of accuracy – an important factor whenever data handling is involved. The traditional boarding process is rife with opportunities for problems. Every time a piece of data is moved manually from one source to another, the possibility for data entry errors exists. Data entry errors can be the difference between an application getting approved or rejected, and as a result, they can be extremely costly. By removing as much manual data handling from the process as possible, TurboApp helps ensure that data quality is never compromised, resulting in more approvals and a fatter bottom line.

TurbpApp is a game-changing productivity tool, and it’s only one of the many powerful features include in IRIS CRM. All BAMS merchant services partners get full access to the full IRIS CRM suite, so get in touch with us to find out how you can put this incredible customer resource management tool to work for your company today.

April 9, 2019

Does Your Business Really Need A Merchant Services Account?

Whether you’re a start-up or an established business, at some point you’re going to be faced with the decision of how to accept electronic payments and whether or not to apply for a merchant services account. That can be a tough choice, as there are a lot of misconceptions surrounding merchant accounts, from the difficulty of approval to their usefulness to different kinds of businesses.

While some businesses find a way to get by without one, most companies will eventually come to the decision that a merchant account is the right choice for them, and with good reason. The alternatives that exist, while serviceable, aren’t ideal, and the benefits to be gained from a merchant account are hard to ignore.

The Alternative: Third-Party Processors

The first and most obvious alternative to accepting card payments through a merchant account is not accepting card payments at all. That’s a bad choice, and most serious businesses would never even consider not offering customers some sort of plastic option. The other alternative is third-party processors, and while these are a popular choice for some much smaller businesses, they’re not a good choice for companies doing any real volume.

PayPal is probably the most well-known example of a third-party processor. PayPal allows members to accept credit card payments, but those payments are processed through PayPal’s master merchant account, with the company acting as a middle-man. As with any middle-man, they make their money by tacking on additional fees. Those fees aren’t insignificant, and they make third-party processors fairly expensive on a transaction-by-transaction basis.

The Benefits of a Merchant Account

While a merchant account isn’t technically necessary to accept credit payments, compared to the alternatives, there are some major benefits to having one. They include both the financial benefits that a merchant account offers, as well as the less obvious, but equally important benefit of lending credibility to your business.

Financial benefits:

The first major financial benefit is that having a merchant account makes your business more accessible to your customers, and that can only be a good thing. With each new generation, cash becomes more and more obsolete, and card payments become more and more the norm. Your customers want to pay you with cards, and, generally speaking, when someone wants to give you money, you should let them!

The second financial benefit is that a merchant account is almost certainly the cheapest option you’ll have access to for accepting card payments. That doesn’t mean all merchant accounts and payment processors are created equal, and you should shop around very carefully when deciding who to sign on with. But compared with the alternatives, a merchant account is generally your most cost-effective bet on a per-transaction basis.

Trust benefits:

Perception is reality, and if a customer perceives your business in a negative light, there’s a good chance you’re going to lose the sale. When you accept payments through a third-party processor, it generally requires customers to be redirected from your website to the processor’s website. That can be a jarring experience in the middle of a transaction, and it can easily cause a customer to abandon their purchase altogether.

A merchant account allows you to accept secure, PCI compliant payments directly through your website, under your own familiar branding, and without any scary redirects. That’s the experience that consumers expect from well-established, reputable merchants, and it can’t be overstated how far it can go in reinforcing the trust between merchant and customer.

BAMS provides merchant services to thousands of businesses across the globe, and 98% of our client merchants report lower stress levels when working with a BAMS merchant account. That’s because we go out of our way to ensure your payment processing experience is as easy as possible – from getting your account set-up, to ensuring PCI compliance, to accepting payments, reporting, and beyond.

April 4, 2019

Four Common Payment Processing Myths You Can’t Afford To Continue Believing

Plastic is now the preferred payment method of choice for consumers across the globe, and accepting card payments is no longer an option for serious businesses. Unfortunately, a number of myths surrounding payment processing still muddy the waters and keep some businesses from taking the leap. Those myths are generally rooted in old information from a time when getting set-up to accept credit cards wasn’t all that easy, but those days are long gone. Here are four of the most persistent of those myths, and how they diverge from the reality of modern payment processing.

Myth One: PCI compliance is only required for merchants doing high transaction volumes.

Fact: This could not be more incorrect. If you’re accepting credit card payments, you’re expected to be PCI compliant no matter how many transactions you process. There is no compliance floor that excuses merchants from keeping their customers’ payment information and personal data secure. Even if your business only processes a single credit card payment, failing to meet PCI compliance standards could be extremely costly, both financially and from a reputation perspective.

When you partner with BAMS, our team of PCI compliance experts will reach out to lead you through the compliance process, making it easier than ever to offer your customers the security they need.

Myth Two: Processing fees are profit-killers.

Fact: There is no getting around payment processing fees, but the idea that they hurt overall profitability is just crazy. In reality, a number of studies have shown people actually spend more money when they pay with credit cards. The exact reason isn’t clear, but it probably has to do with the fact that paying with a credit card doesn’t feel the same as paying through other means like cash or cheque because you aren’t actually handing something over. The result is that, while accepting credit card does involve paying the associated fees, you’ll actually sell more by offering card payments, making the fees more than worthwhile.

At BAMS, our goal is always to save you money, and our 5-step price comparison and quotation process is designed to show you exactly how we can help you lower your transaction fees.

Myth Three: From a merchant perspective, all credit cards are created equal.

Fact: Banks recognize multiple levels of credit cards. The common consumer cards most people carry in their wallets are considered level one cards. But corporate and government credit cards are considered level two and level three, and they’re eligible for lower interchange fees thanks to their relative reliability. The catch is, to access those lower interchange fees on your processed transactions, your payment processing software has to be set up to handle these types of cards.

The data-entry associated with level 2 and level 3 cards can be a headache, but BAMS is designed to automate that process, allowing you to easily reap the benefits of the lower fees that come along with corporate and government card purchases.

Myth Four: Chargebacks are a fact of life, and there is no way to mitigate them.

Fact: While it’s true that some chargebacks are completely legitimate, unfortunately, a large number of them are fraudulent. Merchants that aren’t set up to properly handle chargebacks lose huge amounts of money each year to these shady disputes, but merchants aren’t powerless, and fraudulent chargebacks can be detected and minimized. The key is vigilant monitoring and timely responses, and a good payment processor can provide the tools necessary to do both.

BAMS provides a full suite of tools to help manage and minimize chargeback losses, including instant dispute updates, online dispute management, cardholder authentication tools, and more.

BAMS is the industry leader in affordable electronic payments solutions, and thousands of merchants across the globe, including some of the world’s biggest brands, trust us for their payment processing. Contact us today to find out more about how we can help your business accept electronic payments and as easily and cost-effectively as possible.

March 18, 2019

What Can Merchant Services Do For You?

Cash may have certainly been king at one point in time, but nowadays, card-based transactions reign supreme for consumers and the businesses they shop at. 77% of consumers prefer to pay with credit and debit cards over cash.

With this in mind, making decisions around the payment types you’ll accept as a business owner proves crucial for maintaining long-term positive cash flow. While opting for cash payments only may save you on transaction fees, it limits the purchasing potential for customers both in-store and online.

If you’re moving forward with electronic payments, you’ll need to choose a merchant service provider. Merchant services provide businesses with the financial tools necessary for processing credit card transactions, as well as debit cards and mobile payments. They will set you up with a merchant account, which essentially functions as a go-between across your business bank account, credit card networks, and a customer’s issuing bank.

Technicalities aside, here’s what great merchant services can do for you.

#1: Lower Stress

4.9 out of 5 clients report lower stress levels when working with merchant accounts. This is because, with services like BAMS, you receive more than just a payment processing portal. You’ll achieve peace of mind thanks to in-depth reporting and analytics, protection from chargebacks, and small business funding options for when you’re ready to take operations to that next level.

#2: Free Up Time

With merchant services, the less time you spend worrying about money coming in, the more time you have to spend elsewhere. Build your brand, put together a marketing plan based on insights gained from your payment processing reports, and focus on generating even more interest in the products and/or services you have to sell.

#3: Save You Money

BAMS is a merchant services industry leader for a reason. We don’t just provide business owners with tools they can trust, we provide them with tools they can trust to get the job done and save them money.

Our 5-step price comparison process involves a detailed analysis of all rates and fees associated with your current payment operating costs, highlighting line items you can cut to save money over time.

#4: Seamlessly Integrate with Business Operations

The more in sync your tools and services are with each other, the more informed your decisions will be across all areas of business operations. From ecommerce to POS systems for hospitality, restaurants, retail and more, merchant services should provide enough integrative capabilities to accommodate your business, regardless of industry.

Final Thoughts: What Can Merchant Services Do for You?

On the surface, choosing to partner with merchant services is a to-do item that can seem daunting to any new business owner. But in doing so, you’re not only selecting a tool for the sake of payment processing. You’re aligning with a company that will help you in establishing credibility with your customers for future growth.

Partner with a team that puts customer satisfaction and commitment above all else. Contact the team at BAMS for a free quote!

July 9, 2018

Two Credit Card Policies Your Business Needs to Set in Stone

Credit cards are a big part of every business. If your store isn’t equipped for credit card transactions, you’ve already put a huge roadblock in the way of your company’s growth. But if you don’t have clear in-store and internal policies, even the best merchant services can’t help your business navigate new regulations. Here are two policies that your business needs to create and regularly review:

What’s your return policy?

Some stores don’t have a lot of returns. But whether you sell retail goods, professional services, or food, you need to have a return policy. It can encompass everything from a poor user experience to product exchanges depending on what you want for your business, but the allowances and limitations need to be clear. It also needs to be posted in your store and easy to find online. Making your return policy clear and visible is the best way to fight invalid chargebacks.

While you’re making any edits, make sure your merchant services can easily accommodate the policy. This includes more than making sure your equipment can handle reversing the transaction. Make sure the fees are low enough that you can afford the goodwill a good return policy brings.

What’s your information storage policy?

The benefit of a merchant services provider is that your company isn’t directly handling credit card information. This is incredibly important if you’re an online vendor. If you handle or store PII or credit card information, your company has to be PCI compliant and secure that information from cyber threats. Find a merchant services provider that acts as a third-party information handler. Also, train your in-store employee on how to treat any credit card information in the store. Ideally, your employees should never write down any details or even handle the cards. Find customer-facing machines to keep the line clear.

For more merchant services tips, browse our blog at BAMS.