What ISVs Need to Know When Choosing a Partner for Payment Processing

Wouldn’t it be great if you could make money off of every transaction that you process for your customers? You can, with an integrated payment processing partner. As an independent software vendor (ISV) with an integrated payment processing partner, your software becomes a profit center; your merchants will depend on you for all of their online, in-store, and self-service payment processing needs.

As you enhance payment processing for your merchant accounts, you are revitalizing their business processes. When they need help with their payment processing, they get to tap into the same support and service that you access from your own provider.

What Type of Partnership Should I Use?

You have three partner models to choose from when you team up with an integrated payment processing partner: referral, agent, or independent sales organization (ISO). The model that’s best for you will depend on your specific set of circumstances.

Referral Partnerships

If you opt for the referral model, all you have to do is send new leads to the payment vendor. This vendor takes on the responsibility of providing sales and support. You can add a stream of revenue to your business with this model because each time you send a new lead that signs up for the service, you’ll receive compensation.

Agent Partnerships

In an agent partnership, software vendors handle the sales process and follow-up support after onboarding; however, your merchant service provider will provide initial customer support to your clients along with training and activation of the system. Your compensation for onboarding the new merchant account comes in the form of a portion or percentage of the revenue that is generated.

ISO Partnerships

This is where you can secure the largest revenue potential. Under this type of partnership model, you will handle all aspects of support and sales. This model also provides you with greater control over the user experience for your clients.

What Type of Equipment Is Available?

When you team up with an integrated payment processing partner, your customers get to tap into services that will provide them with the equipment they need. BankCard Connect allows you to easily integrate your software using our open API integration which will help you provide a convenient payment processing service to your customers. By integrating your POS systems with a merchant service provider’s payment processing tools, you and your customers can rest easy knowing all of their payment processing equipment needs are met including in-house transactions or online shopping carts to sync with credit and debit card payment processing services. Plug-ins are also available to process checks, eChecks, gift cards, and customer loyalty cards to further enhance the payment processing experience.

What Support and Service Options Are Available?

It’s important that your customers’ payment processing tools are always up and running; any downtime hinders revenue potential and can lead to frustrated customers who end up taking their purchase elsewhere. With an integrated payment processing partner, your merchants that sign up with the merchant services provider get to tap into 24/7 customer and tech support. They will also receive valuable training for their sales teams and employees to ensure they are using the payment processing systems correctly.

How Much Does it Cost?

With an integrated payment processing partner, customers will have the ability to purchase various services separately or they may take advantage of bundling prices. All credit card processing fees come with full transparency. Customers can also enjoy Interchange Plus pricing, which ensures they are fully aware of a fixed markup that applies directly to the interchange fees published by Discover, MasterCard, and Visa. Furthermore, with a zero-fee processing model, all of the fees that businesses would normally be responsible for relating to credit card processing are passed to the merchant’s end-customer. To avoid this fee, there is also the ability to pay with a debit card.

Equipment Pricing

Any time your merchant accounts integrate payment processing, they must consider the cost of purchasing equipment. With Zenti, customers enjoy access to free equipment, including an EMV/NFC terminal or mobile reader.

Choosing an integrated payment processing partner will benefit both you and your merchants. Are you ready to transform your software into a profit center? Establish yourself as an industry leader and offer your merchants a full suite of services (including optimized payment processing) by partnering with Zenti Services today!