Industries
We’ve learned over the years that we cannot be everything to everyone. While functionally we can provide merchant services for almost any type of business, there are certain industries that better align with our specialized skillset. Our sweet spots are card-not-present and omnichannel businesses.
card-not-present
This is exactly how it sounds. It’s a business that primarily processes transactions when their customers aren’t physically there with their cards present, hence the name. Because of fraud, these kinds of transactions inherently pose more risk to the banks. Think about it. There are limited ways for someone to use a card fraudulently in a card present environment. Because of EMV, cards aren’t easily cloned anymore, so a thief would have to be in the physical possession of a card and walk into a store to use it – exposing himself to be filmed on security camera, or having the bank response at the register read “PICK UP CARD” which means it has been reported stolen. That’s extremely risky – not to say that it doesn’t happen – but most thieves would rather attempt fraudulent transactions in a card-not-present environment.
omnichannel
An omnichannel (sometimes referred to as omni-channel or omnichannel commerce) account is for a business that routinely accepts payments across multiple environments. They may have card-present transactions in a retail environment, mobile transactions, e-commerce transactions, MOTO transactions (mail order/telephone order) or any combination of those. This can present challenges as well. In times past, the banks within the payment card industry used to require separate merchant accounts for each environment a business accepted payments in. So, a retail business that also had an online store would need one account for the card-present sales and one account for the online sales – and so on. Recent changes have loosened those requirements, and now some processors allow merchant accounts to have an omnichannel designation. This means that the acquiring bank understands the merchant’s intention to accept payments across multiple environments. We don’t have to explain to you why having a single, consolidated account is better than needing several accounts.
card-present
As the name implies, these transactions happen when the customer is physically there with their card or a mobile wallet, like Apple Pay or Google Pay, and the payment data is collected by a terminal of point-of-sale system directly from the card holder. This can happen in the form of an EMV chip card, an old school magstripe card, or near field communication (NFC) like mobile wallets. The most common industries in the card present environment are retail and restaurants. While we review each business on a case by case basis to ensure we can bring value to a merchant wanting to work with us, retail and restaurant businesses are not our forte, so we don’t actively pursue them. That said, a retail shop that also has an online store and needs a solution that can manage inventory and sales across both platforms would definitely qualify as those are omnichannel and not solely card-present.
Over the years, we’ve found that our services best align with the following industries: