What Is An Integrated Payment System?

Payment systems allow you to create an effective and seamless experience at checkout for prospects and customers.

13:15 08 July 2022

Most business owners are in business because they love their products or services and want to make money. And one of the best decisions you will make is to have an integrated payment system that allows customers to pay for your service through credit card without your presence. 

 

Payment systems allow you to create an effective and seamless experience at checkout for prospects and customers. However, in this article you will learn what integrated payment systems are, how they work, why you need them on your website, and how to choose a reliable one for your business. 

 

What Are Integrated Payment Systems?

An integrated payment system is a technology software that allows business owners to conveniently link their payment process to other financial functions, such as: sales analytics, customer relationship management and inventory management. So instead of each payment process to work in isolation, integrated payment solutions make everything work well and help reduce human error. 

 

Today, many big companies use this payment method because it speeds up the efficiency of a business. Integrated payment systems also reduce the time spent on manual entry of data. So, anytime your customer confirms an order through your integrated payment system, all their transaction information will be shared automatically with and logged in your inventory management records and accounting. This process helps to save time and hassles of re-entering the information in each system.

 

How Does an Integrated Payment System Work?

Integrated payment systems allow online business owners to offer their customers a secure way to pay for their product or service through a digital wallet or credit card. As this technology opens payment gateway in the online marketplaces, it has helped many businesses to grow. 

 

However, for you to understand how an integrated payment system works, you need to compare payment processing with and without this payment solution.

 

How credit transactions work without integrated payment solution

Below are how credit card transactions will work in your business if you don't have an integrated payment solution.

 

• First, you will have to receive your customer's order through an online chat or call.
• Then enter their credit card number into your terminal.
• In the process, save their receipt, print out an invoice, and staple the invoice and the receipt together for reference.
• Then at the end of each day, you will match paper invoices to the electronic invoices and apply for payments.
• Adjust your account receivable manually and ledger to receive payments. 

 

This process without an integrated payment system isn't just stressful and time-consuming it can also lead to human error that may later affect your business. 

 

How credit transactions work with integrated payment solution

If you make use of an integrated payment system, this is how it works:

 

• The first thing is that you will a customer's order automatically online.
• Then they will enter their credit card number into your accounting software directly.
• Then use the integrated system to process the payments without any hassles. 

 

The use of integrated payment solutions is as convenient as anything. Because it marks invoices as paid and automatically post-payment to your ledger and account. 

 

Why Do You Need Integrated Payments?

Integrated Payment Systems gives Comprehensive Reports.

 

In business not all payments are successful. A pending order can fail multiple times and it can say payment has been initiated. While a successful order can also fail multiple times and say payment has been made. 

 

So as a business owner you can only be able to track successful orders and pending orders. But with the use of an integrated payment system you will be able to get the full reports. The system will show you all the failed and successful payments. 

 

But you may be thinking that how will this comprehensive and detailed report help you out? Worry no more. The report will help you to know the reasons behind the payment failures. In some cases payment failure may be because of non-optimization for mobile pages, technology failures or for your security purpose. 

 

This comprehensive report can also help you to understand the patterns on the payment failure. And the rectification of the issue will give you a high transaction success rate. Unlike without the use of an integrated payment system, you won't be able to know what's wrong. 

 

End To End Automation (No Human Error)

If you are still a business owner who manually cross checks each customer's payment, you must save each customer's receipt. Then match the transaction to an invoice and to an electronic invoice so that you can be able to adjust your general ledger. Still, an integrated payment system makes everything different. It takes away all the hassles. 

 

Immediately after payment on an integrated payment system website, the system automatically updates the dashboard. And just like financial institutions, every order and transaction has Its own unique ID. All you need to do in case of failed payment is search for the order ID by unique transaction reference to see what happened.

 

Above all, the payment system takes away any risk of human error. Because manually taking records and mapping invoices can consume a lot of time and lead to confusion. And this situation can get worse if your customer asks for a refund. You will have nothing genuine to say because you didn't know what happened in the payment process. 

 

However, in cases where you can track double and failed payments, you will be able to refund your customer. This doesn't only make them choose your products or service over your competitors. 

 

In addition, refunds can be a pain when it comes to reconciliation. Your enterprise resource planning system may need mapping of each refund to each customer. However, an integrated payment system makes the process easy. The secure payment option can help you reconcile refunds by filtering them by stays, order ID, and time and also provide you with the payment method and amount to be refunded. 

 

 

Increase cash flow

Cash flow measures how quickly money moves in and out of your business account. While this process may look like an easy task, it is a concept that has made over 85% of small business owners to fail because of poor cash flow. 

 

Receiving payment at the appropriate time isn't as easy as it seems. Manual invoice and accounting can consume your time and delay your business from receiving other payments. However, with the use of integrated payment solutions, your cash flow will increase because it is a system that allows cash to flow into your business in a simple manner. 

 

So, one of the reasons why you need an integrated payment system is to help speed up your cash flow. Also, with this system, payments are posted to your general ledger and account receivable, allowing you to manage your finances conveniently.

 

Marketing and sales capabilities

Integrating the payment system with your CRM is powerful and critical for your business. It allows you to segment customers based on their outstanding debt, product types, renewal dates, and lifetime value. 

 

It also allows you to easily analyze your top customer by conducting a demographics analysis and by-product. 

 

Integrated Payment Solutions For Your Business

Now that you know the reason why you need an integrated payment, you would have seen the potential in having automated payment processing for your business. The amazing thing is that there are tons of options offering integrated payments to businesses. 

 

But here in this technologically advanced world, some people are committed to scamming people, and their focus are business owners. So to find the best-integrated payment solutions for your business, you need to pay attention to these features:

 

Security. 

The first feature you should look out for when choosing a payment solution is security because your security and customers' credit card information are important. Apart from Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliance is important to have decent protection. Therefore when choosing an integrated payment, ensure you choose the solution that can be paired with PC DSS payment gateway. 

 

Client reviews. 

Another important factor to consider is the payment solution reviews from customers. Ensure the reviews are positive because this contributes to your partnership with them. 

 

The simplicity of use. 

The platforms offering integrated payment solution goals make your business process and financial management easier. So if you are not finding your desired solution easy to use, it is best to ignore them. However, ensure they have an intuitive interface and a simple onboarding process that consumes time and doesn't have a lot of resources. 

 

Time in the market. 

Also, look out for payment solutions that have been in the business for more than 5 years and have built credibility and reputation because this ensures you that they are capable and they have the experience to support you. 

 

Scalability. 

While choosing an integrated payment system, it is also crucial that the system is able to facilitate your business needs. Also pay attention to systems that have enough resources to process tons of credit card payments from anywhere in the world. 

 

Which Integrated Payments System to Choose?

Today, we have alot of payment systems to choose from. Some are fake while a lot are real. Below are some of the top integrated payment systems you can choose from. 

 

PaPal

PayPal is one of the integrated payment systems you can choose from. It was created as a digital wallet in 199 and acquired by eBay in 2002. PayPal has become one of the recognized and versatile online payment systems we have today. 

 

We choose PayPal as one of the payment systems you can choose because it gives options to customers to pay with any payment methods and with card schemes like American Express, Visa, and Mastercard. 

 

Due to the fact that PayPal has been trusted by most business owners, PayPal claims that offering its service as an integrated payment system on a merchant website can increase business checkout conversion. 

 

PayPal is simple and easy to use even if you don't have tech knowledge. All you need to do after successful integration is to add a "Pay by PayPal" button to your website. 

 

Square

Square is another payment system you can choose. It was created by Twitter co-founder, Jack Dorsey in 2009 to be an open door for product or service sellers by providing online payment solutions that could be done easily on any device. We choose Square as one of the best because it is best for brick-and-mortar businesses as it allows you to accept both online and physical payment with start-up costs.

 

However, Square accepts all credit cards such as American Express, Visa, Mastercard, and other payment systems such as Apple Pay, and Google Pay but doesn't support PayPal because that's one of its greatest competitors. One of the amazing features of Square is that you can easily set it up. 

 

Stripe 

Stripe was launched in 2011 as an integrated payment solution with a focus on development and technology. Today, Stripe has grown by having over 4,000 active employees in 14 countries of the world. It is one of the best you can choose for your business because it offers customized integrated payment solutions at a competitive rate. This customized solution allows Stripe products to grow and scale with both small and big companies and adapt to all their needs. 

 

You can either choose to build the payment solution of your own or take advantage of Stripe integration with popular eCommerce platforms like Wix, Shopify, WooCommerce and BigCommerce. 

 

Stripe offers all features of a good payment solution except that it is not available all over the world, but it supports over 135 currencies, 47 countries, subscription billing, user dashboard tracking, mobile payments, and one-click checkout. Stripe also offers a virtual point of sales (POS) that makes it easy for you to unify their offline and online channels.

 

 

Conclusion

All the talk and information from this article will be useless if you don't put everything you learn to work. If you believe all these will help your business grow, then get to work and make it happen. The first step in making it happen is to think critically about what you need, how to go about them and why you need them. Then at the end you would be glad you did.