5 Things to Consider When Choosing a Payments Provider

Recently, one of our developer partners told us that a good slogan for a merchant services company these days would be, “Look, another &$^%# payment gateway!” Comical? Yes. Realistic? Not exactly. While it’s true that there are many payments companies out there today, we’re all as unique to the industry as Dennis Rodman is to mankind.

 

Here are the five most important things to look at to determine if a particular payments provider is right for your business.

1. Transparency

Make sure they clearly list all fees and terms on their website and contracts. Here at Arrow Payments, we regularly receive backlash merely from being associated to the merchant services industry by merchants that have fallen victim to the tricks of our trade. Hiding “non-qualified” fees, adding annual fees, long term auto-renewing contracts, and gradually increasing rates are just a few of the ways small businesses are preyed upon. When it comes to transparency in payments, your processor should expose themselves as if they are in the buff on a nude beach.

2. Security

When evaluating a payment gateway, ensure that a redirect process is used within the providers API to avoid passing sensitive data through your own servers. They should also utilize tokenization when storing data and provide a secure vault to do so. This day in age, due to the continual increase in security breaches your processor should do you a solid and handle the heavy lifting on your behalf.  You don’t want to pull a hammy, do you?

3. Support

In the merchant services industry there is a tedious, expensive, and thorough process that a company like Arrow Payments must go through to become a registered provider of Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express. However, there is no registration, test, or single pre-requisite needed to become a sales rep for an organization like ours. This unfortunate situation is why there are hundreds of poorly trained sales reps banging down your doors to offer you the “lowest rate”. At Arrow Payments, we live by the saying, “the best trained team wins”. Our sales and service staff undergo extensive training, are not commission based, and work full time in our corporate office to ensure the highest levels of support. Don’t believe us? Just call, email, web chat, Facebook, or tweet us. Go on… you know you want to.

4. PCI-Compliance

There are three parts to being PCI-Compliant. a) Processing on a compliant device or system b) Following all rules and regulations set forth by the PCI Council c) Submitting your self-assessment questionnaire annually to the card associations. If your processor is unfamiliar or unwilling to assist you with PCI-Compliance, a security breach and non-compliance fees could very quickly become a problem.

5. Ease of Use

Do you need to piece together multiple companies to handle your merchant account, PCI-Compliance, payment gateway and POS System? Having all systems and support teams under one roof alleviates the need to get the “run-around” from your providers and comes equipped with a single point of contact (also known to alleviate migraines).

 

The truth is that all payment processors work off the same interchange costs and all credit card transactions are being authorized by only a handful of networks. Look for a payments provider with a solid track record that understands your industry’s particular challenges and provides the proper software for your company. The choice boils down to which provider offers the most advantageous combination of price, service and technology to support your business from its launch at the way to becoming a major player in your industry.

The Benefits of Being PCI Compliant

With all the complaining about becoming PCI compliant, it is easy for merchants to lose sight of the PCI program’s benefits. Remember, PCI compliance acts as your payment processing safety net—if you ever fall, you’ll be glad it’s there. 

Besides being a merchant’s lifesaver, what are the other benefits to being PCI compliant?

Protection Against (Potential) Security Breaches
I say potential, but that doesn’t mean security breaches are a rarity. They are very real, and can mean the end of your processing days—and your business. In order to become PCI compliant, you will need to answer a questionnaire about the way your business processes transactions. Depending on how you process (through a gateway, POS terminal, etc.), you may be prompted to do a security scan of your system. A scan will pinpoint any weaknesses so you can proactively nip them in the bud, before they become an even bigger issue.

Our gateway’s API provides a unique 3-step redirect process, and also stores sensitive cardholder data through tokenization in our secure off-site vault, so you are already 90% of the way to achieving PCI compliance. 

Sigh of Relief
The process of becoming compliant informs you of the safest processing practices, and which old methods to leave behind. In many cases, merchants aren’t even aware that some of their methods (writing down credit card numbers, for instance) aren’t secure.

Being PCI compliant offers you peace of mind—and less time spent worrying about security breaches, means more time focusing on your business.

Boost in customer confidence
Ecommerce transactions require customers to input all of their sensitive card data onto your site—which makes some a little iffy. Because you require your customers to provide so much detail, it is important to reassure them of your site’s security along the way.

Even if your customer’s don’t know the PCI compliance basics, a positive and secure shopping experience is likely to promote return business. In addition, with security breaches appearing in the news more frequently, in-the-know customers will be seeking out compliant merchants over non-compliant ones.

Avoid costly fines
I cannotstress enough how the cost of becoming compliant (measured in minutes) greatly outweighs the cost of a security breach (measured in dollars). The cost of fines—up to $500,000!—could cost you your business, and/or prevent you from accepting credit cards in the future. Think of becoming compliant like tearing off a Bandaid—the longer you wait, the more it hurts.

At Arrow Payments, we do our best to make the process of getting PCI compliant as quick and painless as possible. As soon as you sign up and get approved, a member of our team will call you and walk you through the self-assessment questionnaire. 

Arrow Payments provides a Simply Better solution for processing payments online. Have a question? Tweet Antonia at @ArrowPayments

6 Tips to Improve Your Ecommerce Website

There are many benefits of making your products available for sale through your ecommerce website—increasing revenue and expanding your customer base to name a few.  

But simply setting up an ecommerce website, and dumping your product catalog into your shopping cart software isn’t enough. Usability, navigation, and design make the difference between just browsing and actually buying.

1. Keep It Simple
The whole point of having an ecommerce store is to sell your products, so why make it difficult for your customers to find what they’re looking for? Finding a product to purchase shouldn’t be a scavenger hunt, so it’s essential to simplify your site navigation. Create a clear hierarchy/dropdown menu for customers to browse by category. Customizable sort options—by price, arrival, brand, etc—can also help your customers find what they want, fast.

Additionally, consider simplifying the registration process if you require it to complete a purchase. Complex and lengthy registration can cause customers to abandon their cart at the checkout.

2. A Picture is Worth a Thousand Sales
The downside of making purchases online is not being able physically see the product yourself. It sounds simple, but having a picture to accompany a product can be the difference between sale and no sale. Depending on your merchandise, you may also want to add multiple images of the same product from different angles. When a customer can actually see what they’re getting, there’s a considerably lower chance that they’ll return it.

3. Go Into Detail
Your customers should never have to leave your site to find information on a product you sell. If they do, you risk losing the sale—especially if another ecommerce site comes up in the search results. It is essential that your product catalog—descriptions and specs included—be seamlessly incorporated into your ecommerce site.  

4. It’s All Relative
If you aren’t linking to related products, you’re missing out on a huge selling opportunity. When a customer views a product on your site, they should be offered a list of products that fall in the same category your customer is searching. Not only does this provide customers with options, but it also helps to establish return business.

5. Cover Your Customer Service Bases
Just because ecommerce sales take place online doesn’t mean you don’t have to work for the sale. Businesses can sometimes forget that a successful ecommerce website requires support team manpower. Easy to use, easy to find contact info can help customers address any issues or ask any questions efficiently and privately.

It’s always good business practice to have your customer service policies listed up front, and most merchant providers (including us) actually require it. Return and refund policies should be prominently displayed to avoid any headaches down the road—i.e. chargebacks.

Likewise, consider including a shipping rates calculator or make the various shipping rates visible throughout the shopping experience. Sites that don’t clearly state shipping costs up front risk losing sales when the final total is added up.

6. Take the Process Out of Processing
And last but certainly not least, make payment processing easy. The customer has made it this far, but functionality issues at checkout can cause a potential purchaser to cut and run. Your customer should be able to select, purchase and confirm the sale without hassle—thus the need for integrated shopping cart software. Many shopping cart providers also offer open support, and can act as an additional safety net should any glitches appear.

Also, make a point to accept a wide range of payment options. Simply accepting Visa and Mastercard will lose you AmEx, Discover, and gift card users who were planning on purchasing. If you are hesitant about adding American Express to your list of accepted cards for fear of high fees, don’t be. In fact, the cost of accepting AmEx is (literally) pennies compared to the cost of losing a sale. Check out our pricing page for a detailed breakdown.  

At Arrow Payments, we review the ecommerce sites of all our merchants to make sure they have all of these elements in place before they begin processing with us. 

Arrow Payments provides a Simply Better solution for processing payments online. Have a question? Tweet Antonia at @ArrowPayments

The 4 Most Dangerous Things Merchants Do

It’s a scary thought, but you could be PCI non-compliant without even realizing it. Protect your business and your customers by avoiding the following bad processing practices:

Scenario 1: You want to save your regular customers time by keeping their credit card numbers on file so they can get in, get out, and everyone’s happy.

Well, not everyone. While storing credit card numbers can save time, it also puts you at serious risk of a security breach. You should never write down credit card numbers to store them in a file on site or on your computer. Instead, utilize a gateway that allows merchants to store credit card details, including level 2 and level 3 data, in a secure cloud server offsite.

Scenario 2: A customer makes a payment offsite, and emails you his payment details—credit card number, expiration date, CVV code, the whole shebang.  

Never receive or send payment card details via email. Even split up into multiple emails, the truncated card number can still be easily accessed by computer-savvy data thieves—or anyone with access to your email. The Arrow Payments gateway allows you to send your customers invoices via email, which they can pay by completing a secure payment form linked to the emailed invoice. It’s just as easy as submitting card details by email, but 100% safer.

Scenario 3: All of your employees are able to access terminals and gateways through one main login and password.

You may not have even considered it, but employee theft is always a possibility. To protect your business and customers from credit card data theft, never use terminals and gateways without user-specific logins and passwords. If employee theft does occur, you will be able to isolate the breach by identifying the employee’s login. Make sure all of your employees have individual logins, and customize accounts so that you control how much access they have.  

Scenario 4: To insure that your employees provide the best customer service possible, you have set up a system that records all calls made to your business.

If your business is utilizing a call recording system, you may not verbally transmit credit card details over the phone. That doesn’t mean you have to get rid of the recording system, it just means you can’t take payments over the phone. Using an e-invoicing tool (like the one on our gateway) will make taking payments quick, easy, and phone call free.

If any of the above scenarios hit a little too close to home, it’s time to get out of the danger zone and onto PCI compliant processing. Still not clear on what PCI compliance is? No worries, there’s a blog for that. 

Arrow Payments provides a Simply Better solution for processing payments online. Have a question? Tweet Antonia at @ArrowPayments

Arrow Payments vs. PayPal/Stripe/Square
6 Tips to Green Up Your Office

Take a look around your office. Notice that stack of nearly blank paper? That harsh overhead lighting? The mountain of napkins and Styrofoam containers overflowing from the trashcan?

These are all signs it’s time for your workplace to green up their act! We spend a large majority of our time in the office, so making a few simple changes to workday habits can substantially reduce your ecological impact. Here are 6 green practices every business should follow—now let’s go green!

1. Flip a Switch, Save the World

It’s that easy! Even on standby your computer will continue to use up power, so it’s important to get into the habit of turning it off—that’s right, completely off—every night.  Simply having your computer plugged in will use unnecessary electrical power, so the best practice is to simply power off that power strip before you leave for the day. In addition, make sure to utilize the energy-saving settings on your computer, lights, and all other electronic devices.

2. Don’t Leave a Paper Trail

Our good friend the Internet makes greening up your act a breeze, because the more you do online, the less paper you waste. Digitize your files and back them up offsite or in cloud-based data storage. You should also make a point to enable double-sided printing, and opt for recycled paper and toner for when you do need to print things out. Also, utilizing a shared drive will allow your employees to share and access documents electronically.  

3. If at First it Isn’t Trash, Reuse, Reuse Again

Before you throw anything away, determine whether or not it could possibly be reused. Use misprints and duplicates as scratch paper, shredded paper as packing material, and boxes as…boxes.

4. Let the Sun Shine

(Not So) Fun Fact: artificial light makes up close to 45% of an office building’s energy use.

Luckily for us, our Chicago office has large windows that allow for us to utilize natural light on sunny days. If you have windows near your desk, skip turning on the lights until you need them. If natural light isn’t an option in your office, make sure you replace all light bulbs with Energy-Star rated compact fluorescents. Motion sensors are also a great solution to unnecessary energy use as they are programmed to automatically shut off when no one is around.

5. Save the Plastic for Your Credit Cards

One of the biggest changes you can make to your weekly trash output is to ditch the plastic ware and invest in some plates, cups, bowls and silverware for the office. Simply using real utensils instead of plastic ones can reduce your carbon footprint ten-fold. Pack your lunch in reusable containers and if ordering delivery, specify that you don’t need any plastic ware and napkins.

6. Ban the bottle

Your body is 60% water, so it seems kind of silly to pay $2 for a bottle of it. Insure that no plastic water bottles will be purchased by your employees again by opting instead for an office water cooler. Enjoy cold, filtered water in real cups or reusable bottles, for free! Most water suppliers will even recycle the used tanks for you.

Here at Arrow Payments, we’re committed to sustainability. We’ve gone completely paperless, and in fact, making our entire application process digital saves us roughly 100 pages of paper per account. I’m not saying that if you sign with us you’ll save a tree…but you better just in case.  

Arrow Payments provides a Simply Better solution for processing payments online. Have a question? Tweet Antonia at @ArrowPayments

5 Ways to Use the Arrow Payments Gateway

We’re a team of multi-taskers, and we created our gateway in the same vein. Why serve just one function, when you can seamlessly handle 5? The Arrow Payments gateway doesn’t just move your money; it moves your entire business into the future—and an efficient future at that!

There are 5 ways to use the Arrow Payments gateway. That’s 5 excellent tools for the price of one. 5 more reasons to love us. 5 less things you have to do. I could keep going, but instead let me present the Fabulous 5:

1. Virtual Terminal – A virtual terminal is a web-based payment processing platform that allows you to process phone, mail, and POS transactions instantly online. Remote login allows you to access and process over the virtual terminal anywhere with internet access.

2. Transparent Redirect—Payments received via Arrow’s payment form which can be integrated with your own website. We simplify PCI by keeping sensitive data on our servers and off yours. Find out more about the magic behind Transparent Redirect here.

3. API—Arrow’s Application Programming Interface (API) is simple, modern, and a web developer’s dream. Our API can easily integrate into any mobile application or shopping cart software your ecommerce website may be using.

4. Recurring Billing—Transactions are automatically billed to customers via a schedule set up on the Arrow Payments website. Billing cycle lengths and due dates are all completely customizable to suit your business. The gateway will also alert you when your recurring customer’s credit cards are expiring.

5. Invoices—The gateway invoicing tool allows to you initiate customer bills through email. Clients are sent to our servers to make a payment and reports notify you of the transaction status, insuring that you never physically or electronically come into contact with sensitive cardholder data—making PCI compliance simple and secure.  You also have the ability to resend the email until the bill gets paid. 

The Arrow Payments gateway is the Swiss Army knife of payments processing—all the tools you’ll ever need, in one sharp little package. 

Arrow Payments provides a Simply Better solution for processing payments online. Have a question? Tweet Antonia at @ArrowPayments

Meet the Team: Jeff

Meet Jeff Phillips—actor, writer, paymentologist.  As an Arrow Payments sales rep, Jeff describes his role as “The Jim Halpert of payments processing.” Thankfully, Jeff doesn’t pull as many in-office shenanigans…well, that we know of.

When he isn’t educating merchants with his vast knowledge of paymentology, Jeff performs live sketch shows with his comedy group, Wood Sugars Comedy. The trio average three shows a month, while simultaneously producing podcasts, short films and of course, humorous tweets.

And as if that isn’t enough, Jeff keeps himself busy penning the next great American novel. He has already published two novellas, Whiskey Pike: A Bedtime Story for the Drinking Mankind and Turban Tan, and is in the process of revising a third, TeleSnuffer.

If he had the opportunity to dine with any four people in history, Jeff would pick an unexpected mix for his dinner company: “George Saunders for a funny story, Galileo for ancient planet talk, Jack Nicholson for keeping things interesting and F. Scott Fitzgerald to foot the after dinner drinks bill on his credit card since he was notorious for that sort of thing.”

Luckily for Fitzgerald, Jeff’s got a few tricks up his sleeve for getting the best rates on credit card transactions. And if things between Nicholson and Galileo take a turn for the worst, Jeff is no stranger to sword play. In fact, he got pretty good at it when he was a Spanish warlord in a play. No wonder he’s so good at slashing unreasonable rates in half.

Taking on Merchant Services’ Bad “Wrap”
What is a Payment Gateway?

All of the blogs I’ve written have been about the amazing benefits of using a payment gateway for your ecommerce site. I’ve been so excited to share all the great features of our gateway with you that I may have skipped over the most important part—explaining the magic behind it all!

A payment gateway facilitates the transfer of information between your ecommerce website, mobile phone, or point of sale system, and your merchant account in a secure, encrypted format. In other words, the gateway is the armored truck that moves your customer’s money to your account, safely and securely.

Each transaction made on a payment gateway is sent through SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) to a processor for approval. It sounds like it’d be a long trip, but really it takes about 2-3 seconds. Throughout each business day the gateway sends (still via that bulletproof, fraud-proof, error-proof armored car!) all your day’s transactions to be stored in our secure vault, and then releases them as a single batch to deposit into your account.

What’s So Great About Arrow Payment’s Gateway?

In a word, everything! If you’ve read any of our blogs, or visited our website, one thing should be abundantly clear: we’re REALLY excited about our gateway, and with good reasons: 

  • For one thing, our gateway was created, and is supported, in house so if you have any questions, we’ll never outsource your call. Just call one number, and reach a team of gateway experts.
  •  Advanced reporting tools come standard in our gateway, so searching for transactions and comparing sales volumes is a breeze.
  • All our fabulous features and user accounts are fully customizable to meet your specific needs.
  • Our easy invoicing tool allows you to initiate customer bills through email.
  • Our gateway allows you to set up billing plans and subscriptions, initiate trial periods, pull billing reports, and update expired credit cards.
  • The best part—the gateway sends all sensitive information to be stored in our secure vault, so no cardholder data even touches your system at all!

The Arrow Payments gateway offers the best of both worlds—the bells and whistles to take tracking your ecommerce transactions to the next level, and the user-friendly simplicity that makes it all possible.

Arrow Payments provides a Simply Better solution for processing payments online. Have a question? Tweet Antonia at @ArrowPayments

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