Alice Chen — March 23, 2017 
If you’ve decided to integrate payments into your software, the next step is to find a payment integration partner. Finding the one that best aligns with your business is important because their technology and support will be representing your brand. This post outlines six questions to consider when evaluating a payment integration partner.
1. What can their API do?
The first thing to consider when you’re evaluating payment partners is their API. Determine what you can and can’t do because ultimately, you want to easily build a seamless payment integration that meets the needs of your customers. Are the transactions encrypted? Are there multiple programming languages? Pre-authorizations? Does it have the ability to integrate with other relevant business functionalities like your accounting or CRM systems? Every business has different needs. And if they don’t have the functionalities that you need, will the processor work with you to build them?
In addition to the relevant payment functions, check that the API is developer-friendly. A flexible API that follows standardized code structures and messaging formats will simplify your developers’ build process.
2. Do they provide adequate developer support?
As important as a developer-friendly API is, check whether the payment integration partner offers help before, during, and after the integration process. No matter how smooth as the integration process is, it’s always helpful to have support on-hand – whether it’s self-help resources or support from the product team. Do they offer getting started guides or developer FAQs? Do they offer direct integration help from their team or 24/7 technical assistance?
3. What level of security do they offer?
PCI compliance is required of everyone who comes into contact with credit cards to ensure a safe ecosystem for processing payments. Ensure that their API is PCI-compliant. Do they encrypt credit card information? Do they use tokens? Tokenization provides an additional level of security by replacing credit cards digits with a sequence of random numbers, rendering it useless if fraudsters manage to get their hands on it. Is the company itself secure? Are there procedures in place to prevent and deal with data breaches?
4. What is their revenue share program?
Payment integration partnerships will frequently offer you a share — typically, a percentage — of your referred customer’s processing volume. The program will vary across partners but some only offer revenue share on transactions your customers process through the integration and other offer revenue share on all transactions that they enable your customers to process – including those processed on traditional terminals.
5. What type of customer support do they offer?
What’s the onboarding process like? Are they able to get your customers processing payments seamlessly and easily? And then beyond that, do they have reliable customer service? Do they offer support 24/7? Fast and efficient support for your customers is crucial. To ensure there’s no interruption to your customers’ business, responses to technical issues or billing inquiries has to be resolved promptly.
6. What can they offer my customers?
- Do they offer dedicated merchant accounts? Having their own merchant account versus using an aggregated merchant account can affect their funding times.
- Do they offer flat rates or MDR (merchant discount rates)? Aggregators often use flat rates, while merchant account providers have the flexibility to customize fees and often offer lower rates.
- Do they offer preferred pricing for your merchants through the partnership? Additionally, some partners may offer preferred pricing which helps increase your market penetration and conversion.
- Do they also offer in-store terminals for your customers if needed – and are those sales included in your revenue share program? Not all payment integration partners will include revenue share from terminals.
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