Convenient Merchant Services Often Overlooked
There are many ways to accept payments from your customers with some methods being more cost-effective than others.
Full-service Merchant Services Providers can provide advanced payment collection methods that are often overlooked because merchants simply don’t know about new technology that could truly benefit most merchants. There are five payment methods using integration products that are less expensive than traditional chip reader transactions. While integrated products might have a “per transaction” fee, the goal for merchants should be to reduce your “effective rate” and increase efficiency. Your effective rate is the total amount of fees you pay in a month divided into the total amount of transactions submitted.
Recurring Billing
Whether you are billing your customer the same amount each month your you want to provide four equal payments for a large transaction, Recurring Billing eliminates the tedious labor of preparing and sending monthly invoices. The automated process allows your customers to set-up a convenient payment date. When the date arrives, their card is automatically charged, and the payment is automatically posted to your accounting software. This technology is far less than what you might pay an employee to perform the same functions manually.
Electronic Invoicing
Electronic Invoicing allows merchants to send an email invoice that includes a direct link for the customer to enter their payment details. Statistics show that this link causes invoice payments to be received 40% faster than traditional invoices. This is another option that most merchants think might be very expensive. Service businesses benefit the most from this. Invoices can be sent the moment the work is completed, and the customer can make the payment immediately.
Card Vaulting
PCI requirements are very strict about how sensitive credit card information is stored. A data breach can become a nightmare for a merchant if credit card data is leaked from a merchant’s servers. Target, Home Depot and Chipotle are a few big merchants who have experienced data breaches. Card vaulting keeps your customer’s credit card data safe on a third-party server that eliminates any risk for you in storing the card information. Card vaulting offers a legal way to store a customer’s credit card information for later use. This is done securely through a payment gateway vault that makes future transactions a breeze for your customers. They won’t have to enter their information for future transactions. Think about how Amazon does this. When we make household purchases from Amazon, it’s much faster with card vaulting. The vault takes away most of the risk in storing customer information. Using vault storage also allows for recurring billing through the vault.
QuickBooks Integration
Many merchants using QuickBooks falsely believe that they must process their credit cards through QuickBooks if they use it as their accounting platform. Many merchants have slashed the cost of credit card processing by switching their processing while still using QuickBooks. Transactions are posted directly to QuickBooks in real-time. Stop paying exorbitant fees for their built-in processing services. This service is dependent on the version of QuickBooks being used.
Point of Sale Systems
The Point-of-Sale in any business is central to conducting business. Most modern POS systems do more than just ring up sales and process returns. POS systems can keep track of inventory, produce reports on your business’s performance and even help you launch and run loyalty and gift card programs. POS systems include payment solutions such as traditional credit cards, Apple Pay, gift certificates and more.
Aurora Payments offers full-featured POS systems for retail stores, restaurants, bars, food trailers, quick-serve restaurants, hair salons and just about everything in between. Our cloud-based, point of sale services can be integrated with custom applications and features. We even offer mobile, wireless POS systems without access to the internet or power sources. These are great for food trailers, trade shows and mobile merchants. If you want to improve your business’s ability to process sales, it’s worth reaching out to us for a chat. Aurora Payments can be reached at 833-287-6722.