Integrated payments for software companies are simply a good investment, offering only business advantages from optimizing processes to creating opportunities for further growth. Especially with the right payments partner to provide the necessary technology, data security, marketing, and other support backgrounds. Let’s break down how software companies and a special category of them, ISVs can benefit from payment integration.
ISV is a common acronym for independent software vendor. Businesses of this type include organizations that develop and sell software, often used by other businesses. To give you an example, DaySmart, a long-time partner of CardConnect, is an ISV that develops and sells four types of software used by small businesses including pet stores, salons, spas, and tattoo studios. Each type of software provides solutions specific to the needs of each business type. Take the software used specifically by salons, for example. It includes tools to help keep track of things like scheduling, client records, and appointment confirmation emails.
ISVs can provide incredible management tools for businesses many owners and managers couldn’t imagine operating without. Plus, many ISVs aim to consistently provide a seamless experience for their users so they’re likely to partner with other companies for integration opportunities to continue building a more comprehensive solution. When an ISV is able to participate in an ISV partnership, like Fiserv's ISV Partner Program, to integrate payment acceptance, that software becomes even more valuable to its business users.
What Are Integrated Payments?
Integrated payments are the addition of payment acceptance to an already existing platform, software, or system, making business-critical functions communicate and work seamlessly together. When ISVs that offer B2B solutions implement integrated payment systems into their software, they’re then able to offer credit card payment acceptance as part of their platform. This becomes an additional asset to businesses using those software programs.
Let’s go back to our DaySmart software example. As a partner of CardConnect, DaySmart has integrated our payment acceptance into all of their software platforms, so the pet stores, salons, spas, and tattoo studios that we mentioned earlier have the ability to not only use the software as a business management system, but they can also accept payments from their customers, so it becomes a more comprehensive approach to management. Once a company has integrated payment services into their existing system they can offer a more complete version of themselves to their users. Instead of using several separate tools for operating a business, an integrated platform gives users a more simple and seamless experience they can enjoy.
By allowing a payment processing solution to connect to other business management software or ERP systems such as accounting, sales, or customer relationship software, you are able to significantly reduce the time spent on manual tasks like reconciling invoices, entering transactions into multiple platforms, and updating accounting software.
How Can ISVs or Software Companies Benefit From Payment Integration?
There are several benefits for ISVs or software companies that choose to implement integrated payment processing into their already existing systems or software. We’ve highlighted a few below.
1. More Comprehensive Offerings
If you’re an ISV providing merchants with a software that makes running their businesses simpler, you’re already on the right track. When you integrate payment acceptance into your software, you’ve then turned your offering into a more complete solution. When businesses looking for the right tools compare your single-source, one-stop-shop solution to a company that hasn’t put in the same work for an integration that you have, you clearly have the better offering.
Our lives have been simplified so much with the integration of technologies that we sometimes don’t even notice, as it has become the new norm. Business aren't any different. Merchants don’t want to have to implement several systems to run their business. If it’s available to them, businesses will almost always prefer an all-in-one comprehensive solution, because it makes management so much easier that more important things can take the spotlight – like focusing on growth.
2. Top-Notch Data Security
Businesses, both big and small, are frequent targets of fraudsters. When an ISV integrates payment processing into their software, they will have the benefit of an additional layer of security as protecting data is a core focus of a payment company.
Certified payment processing solutions recommended by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) are important to consider when researching the best provider. CardConnect is among the list of providers that offer PCI-validated solutions like point-to-point encryption and tokenization. Solutions like these protect all credit card data captured during transactions run by your business users, from start to finish, at rest, or on the move.
Such integration provides support for the PCI compliance requirements checklist you would need to carry out to ensure your software company is compliant, helping you navigate the management of PCI compliance and reducing the DSS (Data Security Standard) audit scope.
3. Increase Cash Flow
Without the ability to process payments electronically and have the transaction data integrate automatically with ERP or accounting software, businesses are often subject to waiting periods for invoice payments and delays in having an accurate picture of the business cash flow status. With an integrated payment processing solution, an accurate view of your business cash flow is available at the end of each day, allowing you to more effectively manage payroll, inventory, vendor payments, and to make informed business operation decisions.
4. Save Time & Money
Integrated payment solutions usually provide a level of automation that helps you to save some of that invaluable time you need to focus on other areas of your business as you no longer need to devote time to monitoring, tracking or reporting any payment transactions. Payment integration would allow all this to be done automatically.
5. Remove Human Error
Payment integration for software companies help to remove human error and improve the accuracy of your reporting. There would be no redundant entries, calculation mistakes or misplaced invoices which, in turn, means fewer losses for your business.
6. Improve Forecasting
If you are not integrating your payments then processing, accounting and marketing all exist separately. This is taking up a lot of your time and energy which could be focused on other areas of your business. With payment gateway integration, you can accurately visualize the future of your finances.
7. Improve Marketing
Once your payments have been integrated, you might begin to realize new marketing opportunities. You will be able to accurately understand whether your ‘best seller’ is actually making you money or losing you money. From this new understanding of your existing products, you will have the opportunity to scale up accordingly.
8. High-Quality Support
As an ISV, if you do your research and build a partnership with the right payment solutions provider, you’ll be backed with a hefty level of support by teams that want to see you grow. You should expect a high-quality, white-glove, customized experience from the first point of engagement, during implementation, and throughout the (hopefully) long life of your partnership. During the development phase of your integration, you should be given access to a sandbox or testing environment in order to test transactions for successes or failures, prior to shifting to your production environment.
Discover CardConnect’s integrated payments offering
CardConnect offers an ISV program that meets all the expectations and benefits mentioned above. Our support teams work closely with our partners to build a custom solution that fulfills any needs of the software provider, including marketing support. Once an ISV is integrated into the CardConnect platform, we then refer to them as an ‘Integrated Software Vendor'.
For ISVs that would like to start a conversation with us about what payment integration with CardConnect looks like and the ISV solutions we offer, fill out the form here and we’ll be in touch.
If you’re interested in learning more about credit card payments in general, check out our downloadable Credit Card Payments 101 Guide