As the payments ecosystem becomes ever more complex and regulation continues to evolve, demands on solution providers are increasing. Partnerships within the space are therefore becoming more important, to enable businesses to meet their customers' expectations.
Finding the right partners is essential, particularly when you provide your customers with a whole ecosystem to make their lives easier and support their business goals. Juggling different partners and integrating multiple systems and tech puts constraints on the time you have to spend on each, meaning you need partners that you can rely on to get things done with minimal fuss.
Despite being just one aspect of the service you offer, payments are incredibly important to the experience of your customers. Fast and easy checkouts, omnichannel offerings, and multiple payment options make a huge difference when it comes to conversion rates, reducing cart abandonment, and making sales. Making a payment is the final step of the buying journey, meaning it is what stays with the end-consumer. Creating a seamless experience will therefore ensure positive associations with your customers’ brands.
Further benefits can be derived from paying attention to your payments. Accessing payments data, understanding it, and being able to utilise it is key to successfully growing and evolving a business.
Having a payments partner that can provide all this simply, seamlessly, and tailored to your needs is fundamental to providing you with the support you need to give your customers what they deserve.
We spoke to our new partner and customer expert, Philip Harding, Director of Account Development, on how you can make sure you’re getting the most from your payments partner for your business:
Why is integrating with the right payments partner so important?
The payments environment is getting ever more complex. This, combined with increasing consumer expectations particularly around speed of service, simplicity of use, and easy access to data, means it is virtually impossible for one company to own the payments journey end to end anymore. Therefore, finding the right partners to work with is critical. If you find the right ones, you can utilise a partner’s strengths to improve the customer journey and to improve capability while ensuring the high standards of service you provide to your customers are still met.
Your payments partner is an extension of your business and integral to the service you offer your customers. Whether you are a merchant, a system integrator, or a software vendor, choosing the right partner is key to delivering a seamless checkout and the right user experience for your clients to maximise transaction conversion. Your partners represent your business, meaning if they provide a negative experience to your customers through tech that is tricky to use or doesn’t work properly, it reflects badly on you.
What are the most important things to consider when looking for a payments partner?
There are a number of elements to consider when choosing a payments partner, from technical capability that includes Flexible API-based online solutions, multi-channel options, and multiple payment methods to the speed of client onboarding and account management. The payment journey for one customer could involve multiple partners, so ensuring the customer experience is optimised through the partnerships and not made more complex is imperative.
Perhaps most importantly, you need a reliable partner that is ‘easy’ to do business with. A strong team of payments experts that understand your business’ needs and prioritises collaboration is key to establishing a successful working relationship and ensures that you can count on them to meet your needs and be there for you.
Flexible commercial models are also necessary to ensuring your solutions are perfectly tailored to your individual business and can adapt to help you achieve your goals.
What typically makes a partner want to switch providers?
The biggest drivers to selecting a new payments partner are typically technology, relationship, and cultural fit. Based on technology, relationship and culture, there must be a win-win for an effective partnership to thrive. It doesn’t matter what the commercial terms are if the solution doesn’t work or you don’t have great working relationship.
How do we help businesses achieve their goals?
Businesses choose Cashflows for our collaborative, people-driven approach to relationships and dedication to improving the customer experience. We aim to work closely with our partners to understand their needs and make doing business easy. From supporting integration to fast client onboarding and ongoing relationship management, supporting our partners and their customers is hugely important to us.
Interested in learning more about what we offer our partners? Contact us here.