The Most Common Merchant Services Offered by Payment Processors
Every business looking to make credit or debit card sales will eventually have to engage with some type of payment processor, also sometimes known as a merchant services provider. These companies offer a number of products and services designed to facilitate secure, convenient card transactions, but they also offer a wide variety of value-added services that can help merchants with everything from cash flow management to fraud reduction and beyond. With that in mind, just what kinds of products and services does the rather generic term “merchant services” generally encompass? The following is a short (and by no means complete) list of some of the most common services merchants can expect to access through top payment processors. Different processors naturally have different offerings, but when shopping around for a new merchant services partner, the services and features listed below are an ideal place to start.
Merchant Service: Payment Processing
The primary merchant service payment processors offer is merchant accounts that allow businesses to accept credit and debit card payments. Merchant accounts are specialized bank accounts, different from standard business checking accounts and issued by payment processors in partnership with banks known as “receiving banks,” that are specially aligned with the major card companies like Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and more.
When a merchant accepts a card payment, the funds from the transaction go directly into their merchant account, minus a small fee that pays for the transaction processing. BAMS offers merchant accounts with the lowest transaction fees in the industry — guaranteed — thanks to our interchange-plus pricing system.
Merchant Service: Ongoing Merchant Support
Almost as important as facilitating transactions themselves, the quality of ongoing merchant support is a huge factor to consider when selecting a merchant services provider. Not all payment processors or independent sales organizations (ISOs) are the same, and some may offer varying levels of service both in scope and dedication. But with complex issues to deal with like ongoing PCI compliance and choosing the right tools, the value of a great support team can’t be overstated.
BAMS merchants get access to an industry-best team of experts that work on a dedicated basis, ensuring merchants will work with the same support professionals throughout the relationship with the company. That dedicated system both ensures merchant issues will never slip through the cracks during the support process and enables support professionals to truly get to know the businesses they work with.
Merchant Service: Payment Hardware and Software
Merchant accounts allow a merchant to receive the funds from credit and debit card payments, but they still need to provide customers with a way to actually enter their card details. Whether it’s online, in-store, or both, many merchant services providers offer the hardware and software businesses need, including non-contact payment terminals, online payment gateways, and more.
BAMS offers a full line of secure EMV-compliant payment hardware, including contactless terminals allowing tap payment with both cards and smartphone-based digital wallets like Apple Pay. BAMS also integrates with most of the top payment systems on the market, including leading gateways from top providers like Authorize.Net and NMI and over a dozen top point-of-sale systems.
Merchant Service: Fraud and Chargeback Protection
Merchants work hard to keep their customers’ personal and payment information secure, but who protects merchants? For better or worse, fraud and chargeback abuse are a cost of doing business, and every merchant will experience one or both at some point during their operations. But that doesn’t mean merchants have to just roll over and accept it. Some merchant services providers offer merchants advanced fraud and chargeback systems designed to stop problems before they occur and make any problematic transactions that do slip through easier to fix.
BAMS offers merchants a number of advanced protections, covering both fraud prevention and chargeback management. On the front end, BAMS uses integrations with top third-party anti-fraud systems like Signifyd and 3DSecure to ensure suspicious transactions are caught before ever being accepted. The BAMS Dispute Assistant Manager also streamlines and improves the chargeback response process by bringing everything — from notification to evidence compiling to submission to monitoring — into a single online system.
Merchant Service: Next-Day Funding
Merchants are in business to make money, but unfortunately, many have to put up with frustrating holds that see the funds from sales delayed by two or even three business days prior to hitting their merchant accounts. Some merchant services providers offer qualifying merchants a way to avoid those holds through next-day funding programs. Next-day funding sees the funds from batched transactions hit a merchant’s bank account the morning of the following business day, ensuring the fastest possible access and healthy cash flow.
Qualifying BAMS merchants can access next-day funding with one of the most generous cutoff times in the industry. Any eligible transactions batched before 9:00 PM EST will hit the merchant’s bank account by 7:00 AM EST the following business day — as little as ten hours later.
Merchant Service: Gift Card and Loyalty Programs
Gift card and loyalty card programs are hugely beneficial for merchants of all sizes. Loyalty cards incentivize customers to return and to spend more than they otherwise would, and gift cards lock in revenue immediately for goods or services to be delivered later. Some payment processors and ISOs offer merchant services designed to make the creation and management of gift and loyalty programs easier.
BAMS merchants have access to a full line of professionally designed gift and loyalty cards, and merchants looking for a more custom feel can design their own cards and have them printed up by BAMS as part of their overall service package. The BAMS support team is also happy to help merchants just starting out with gift or loyalty programs to get all the necessary parameters set up in their point-of-sale systems.
To find out more about the merchant services offered by BAMS, and how our guaranteed low transaction fees can save you money on your merchant statements each month, click here to get started with your free five-point price comparison.
