Payment Facilitation: An Integrated Approach

Merchant Onboarding Process

Merchants are all too familiar with the arduous and frustrating process of on-boarding with a payment processor so they can begin accepting payments. Payment facilitation streamlines the process and creates a user friendly and intuitive way for merchants to get set up with payments on the platforms and products they use to manage their business. After all, when starting a business or changing a processor in order to better their rates, merchants want to begin accepting payments “yesterday” and most definitely don’t want to spend precious time waiting to get approved both from the processors, underwriters and what feels like hundreds of others. So what is a merchant to do when they are required to partner with a processor in order to accept credit card payments, but continue to experience frustration with the all too familiar time-consuming process of working with multiple third-parties?

Payment Facilitation

As payment innovation has grown, a solution has surfaced called payment facilitation, a way for those wanting to save time, money and avoid having to work with many third-party companies, to take away the frustrations they are currently facing. This solution can benefit not only merchants, but specifically those providing software to their clients that want an all-in-one payment solution without having to work with other third party companies in order to accept payments and provide their services. This solution involves partnering with a PayFac, or Payment Facilitator. A Payment Facilitator is a merchant service provider that streamlines the on-boarding merchant account process. The PayFac gathers a few key data points from the merchant, the merchant is quickly evaluated by an underwriting tool and is approved or declined in as little as a few minutes. PayFacs underwrite the merchants as the merchants process transactions on an ongoing basis versus all upfront when creating a new merchant account.

Risk & Benefits

Naturally, there are some risks involved in becoming a PayFac, including taking on the underwriting process along with the risks associated with that. PayFacs are also held responsible for any financial losses associated with the processing and potential fraud that the sub-merchants experience. However, the benefits of becoming a PayFac can’t be ignored, such as being able to offer a merchant services solution integrated with other services tailored to meet the merchant’s needs and provide what other payment processors can’t. Additionally, the benefit of saving the merchant time when setting up their account makes offering this type of solution very appealing.

Zift as a Payment Facilitator

Zift fits right into this model of payment facilitation, being able to offer merchant service solutions integrated with the specific needs of each customer’s company. Zift offers a payment technology infrastructure that is designed for software platforms, marketplaces and enterprise companies, all from a single point to manage their customers in a retail, MOTO, mPOS and online environment. Via payment facilitation Zift is able to offer merchants omni-channel solutions, which allow them to accept any type of payment including mobile, online, card present, or card not present and retail. Companies like Zift offer software platforms and their users a one-stop-shop. One platform where they are able to onboard quickly and get all their processing and service needs taken care of without having to have multiple accounts set up with other third party companies. Through working with Zift, platforms can easily extend payment processing capabilities to their users who won’t have to wait while underwriters at traditional processors take days to approve their applications, instead, underwriting is frictionless and the user’s account creation and setup within the platform is automated. Payment processors of the past only offer payment solutions. Innovative payment providers like Zift offer not only streamlined solutions, but offer software providers, marketplaces, and enterprise companies a model that isn’t just good, it’s great. Zift = payments made simple.