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Ecommerce payments—payments made online or via mobile devices—continue to grow by around 10% per year in the U.S. Even the smallest businesses or charitable organizations can benefit from accepting ACH, card, or digital wallet payments online. Unfortunately, many small businesses don’t have the expertise or the resources to create and maintain online acceptance capabilities. A turnkey online payment acceptance product provides a strong sales differentiator for the small- to medium-sized business (SMB) market.
Our solution provides a hosted, business-branded web page that accepts card, ACH, or PayPal® payments from consumers or businesses. The payments page can be accessed with a simple link or more fully integrated to help streamline the payment experience. Our most connected model offers biller direct features like payment due notifications and the display of invoice information. Regardless of configuration or integration method, our solution collects payment information, fulfills the payment by initiating it through the proper channels, and provides reports of collection and processing activities.
Because our online payments solution is in the form of a web page and the associated administrative capabilities, these products don’t accept payments via an API. Instead, our solutions allow businesses and organizations to integrate our hosted payments page with their existing online presence through a single sign-on (SSO) interface. These SSO APIs are discussed in more detail below.
Each business or organization can determine how it wants to identify or authenticate users who make payments. They may allow any user to make a payment as a “guest” or they may allow (or require) users to register prior to making online payments. Registered users can view information about prior online payments. Businesses can even require users to validate their identity by matching shared information during the registration process.
Guests - Businesses and organizations can opt to receive payments from anyone, without requiring payers to identify themselves or sign into the service. (This would be especially appropriate for charitable organizations or other entities that accept contributions from anyone.) Guests who make online payments must enter enough information to fulfill the type of payment they make, which may often include name and account information.
Registered Users - Businesses may also wish to offer (or require) users to register prior to making online payments. Registered users can store payment methods and credentials to streamline future visits and view information about prior online payments made through our solution. Businesses can even require users to validate their identity by matching shared information during the registration process.
Businesses may choose to support one or both types of users, depending on the needs of their company or organization.
Businesses and organizations can accept the most common types of online payments, including credit and debit cards, Automated Clearing House (ACH) transactions, and payments from a digital wallet (PayPal).
Accepting Card Payments - If configured by the business or organization to accept card payments, our solution requires payers to enter the information required to support those transactions. This information may include the payer’s name, card number, and other pertinent fields. Our solution routes the card transaction through our gateway to the merchant’s card processor and displays a response indicating the success or failure of the transaction.
Authorizing ACH Transactions - Payers may also choose to authorize the business or organization to collect payment by sending an ACH debit transaction to their account. Payers must enter their bank and account information and indicate their authorization for the transaction. Our solution creates the transaction and sends it to the ACH operator on behalf of the business and its originating financial institution.
Taking PayPal Payments - When a user chooses PayPal or opens the PayPal login page and the site temporarily transfers the user to the PayPal site. Once the user has completed the payment process in PayPal, the PayPal system returns them to our solution where they receive a notice that their payment was successful. The payment is fulfilled by PayPal through their network, but our solution stores a record of the payment and displays it in the history and reporting available on our administrative site.
There are three levels of single sign-on integration available for our payments site:
Link to SmartPay Express - SmartPay Express offers the simplest form of integration: a link to the page. Businesses or organizations may create a button or link on their site that simply transfers the user to our solution’s payments page. In this model, anyone with the appropriate link can visit the page, but businesses would still have the option to require users to register prior to making a payment. This type of basic integration is very effective for organizations such as churches and charities that routinely accept contributions from individuals without requiring membership or a registration process, but it is also effective for smaller businesses that may or may not wish to require that users register before paying.
Single Sign-On to Integrated SmartPay Express (ISPE) - The SSO API for Integrated SmartPay Express provides a wider range of submission options that help provide a more seamless experience for users. When sending the user to the ISPE site, the calling system may:
Identify the user as a specific previous customer.
Provide a new customer name, address, and contact information (phone and/or email) for use in the current payment request and optionally us the information to create a new permanent customer record or update an existing customer record.
Indicate whether the user is a consumer or a business.
Indicate the type of payment to be created or allow the payer to choose.
Provide the amount of the transaction (which prefills the amount field on our solution screen).
Link to SmartPay Biller Direct - While the Biller Direct product provides the most granular level of billing and online collection features, the integration mimics that of SmartPay Express: a link to the page. Biller Direct is primarily used by financial institutions to allow payments against loans held by the institution. FI's may create a button or link on their site or include it in an optional payment due email notification that simply transfers the user to Biller Direct's landing page. In this model, anyone with the appropriate link can visit the page, but the Fl would still have the option to require users to register prior to making a payment.