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One thing holds true across platforms of all sizes and descriptions: everyone needs payments. In today’s market, it’s almost a requirement for platforms to provide their clients with payment capabilities — if they don’t, they risk losing business to competitors who do enable payments. For many platforms, this isn’t news, and most already have a payment service provider of some type.

But there’s a catch: it’s no longer good enough to offer bare bones payment services, and many payment service providers simply don’t cut it for a few key reasons. As a result, an inadequate payments solution may be holding you back and limiting your growth opportunities. Here are the top six signs that you’ve outgrown your payment service provider — and why it’s worth it to upgrade.

1. Your payment service provider limits the growth of your clients

A major indicator that you’ve outgrown your payment service provider is that it’s no longer meeting the needs of your clients. Clients may start to clamor for additional features your provider doesn’t offer, or you may simply realize you’re limiting the business potential of your clients — and thus of your own platform — by offering them an outdated payments solution.

Payments are so essential to the businesses of your customers that you should ensure you’re offering them a solution that can grow and adapt with them. Otherwise, you may find that clients will search for a competitor’s platform with the features they need.

In addition, if your platform helps businesses sell goods, international eCommerce may be a major aspect of your clients’ growth. Without a global payment service provider, your clients will miss out on significant business or be unable to expand internationally. Even if your customers are based in the U.S., they’ll need global payment capabilities to sell into foreign markets, which is a ballooning source of growth in eCommerce.

Don’t limit your clients or prevent them from gaining new customers. Instead, use payments to enhance the value of your platform — a selling point rather than an afterthought. Partner with a modern payment service provider to make your platform stickier with existing clients and more attractive to new clients.

2. Your customers can’t leverage alternative payments

If your provider only offers certain payment types, such as credit cards, it’s limiting your clients, particularly if you offer a mobile platform. Digital payment types like Apple Pay are revolutionizing eCommerce, but if your clients can’t offer a mobile wallet payment option to their customers, they’ll lose out on business.

Alternative payments are a significant value-add for your clients: digital payment options are a huge driver of sales and conversions. Their customers won’t have to type out a credit card number and can instead hit a simple “Buy Now” button. It’s a modern and seamless way to pay, but if your clients can’t offer that feature to their customers, they’ll miss out on significant revenue. Augment your platform will modern payment offerings to enhance your platform’s value to your clients. If your payment service provider doesn’t make that possible, it’s a clear sign you’ve outgrown them.

3. You can’t monetize your partnership with your payment service provider

It’s not just your customers who suffer from an inadequate payment service provider. Your revenue opportunities will feel the impact, too. The wrong provider won’t bring in any money for your platform, and may even cost you money.

Older, outdated payment service providers like AUTH.net don’t offer platforms any ability to monetize their services. That means you’ll drive traffic for that payment provider and see millions of dollars run through your platform, without seeing any benefits for your own company. If that’s the case, you’ve outgrown your provider, and it’s time to move on.

Modern, comprehensive payment service providers, by contrast, offer revenue share models. Under this model, both your platform and your payments partner will earn revenue from payments that pass through your platform. You’ll essentially gain a free revenue stream with minimal work required — it’s a win-win.

Have you outgrown Stripe? Download this free eBook to find out.

4. Your provider relies on older, inflexible technology

Another acute sign that you’ve outgrown your payment service provider is old, clunky technology. Old-school payment service providers often rely on outdated technology, which can cause major headaches for both your development team and your clients. In fact, the impact of old tech is felt by stakeholders at every level:

  • Your own team has to spend 3-6 months building an integration to the payment provider, only to find themselves handcuffed and unable to implement updates
  • Your clients struggle to leverage the features of the integration, such as pulling transaction and reporting data
  • Their customers have a negative payment experience, needing to leave the client’s store and log into a different portal

A modern updated solves for these issues. For instance, providers that can integrate with a single API are quick to implement and provide a seamless experience for end-users with features embedded directly into your platform.

5. The provider offers limited support resources

Many payment service providers that offer basic functionality will have very limited support resources. Any time you want to make a change, implement a new feature or get help with a problem, you’ll be directed toward a generic 1800 number or email. For many platforms, that lack of support is incredibly frustrating. After all, payments can be complicated without a team of experts to assist you or to help set up the integration with you. If you’re looking for a more robust payment offering but don’t have the support you need to implement it, it may be time to switch providers.

6. You rely on multiple payment service providers, resulting in too many integrations to separate, limited solutions

You may have already discovered that your payments solution wasn’t cutting it. But if you tried to solve those limitations by adding in other integrations to other providers, you may have created more headaches for yourself, especially as the number of integrations rose. Too many tangled integrations is another major indicator that you’ve outgrown your payment service provider(s).

The more integrations, the more work for your team, and the harder it is to fit payments into your tech stack. It also becomes more difficult to roll out updates, such as updating your code to be PSD2-compliant. You may find that many of those integrations simply aren’t a functional option for your clients, defeating the purpose of those payment solutions.

A newer provider, and one that can offer all the features you need with one or two integrations, nullifies all those problems. Managing payments will be a breeze for your team with a modern payment service provider that offers both robust support and all the latest features you need to stay competitive and compliant.

If any of these signs apply to you, it’s a pretty good indicator that you’ve outgrown your payment service provider. Want to learn more about the benefits of partnering with a modern payment service provider that can scale with you and your customers? Check out this blog to see the benefits of our All-in-One Payments Platform and our simple yet powerful Partner Onboarding API.

If you’re ready to ditch your limited payment service provider, reach out to us today — we’re here to help!

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