IRCE: Build Your Payments Processing Ecosystem with These 10 Questions

Last week Online Tech exhibited at booth #108 at the IRCE show in Chicago. With two consecutive days of jam-packed sessions, speakers covered everything imaginable related to e-commerce. I followed the “Fulfillment, Customer Service and Payment: Making the Last Mile Count” track on the final day of speakers.

Jason Roussos, CMO of Living Direct and Chuck Fillinger, Senior Associate of The Strawhecker Group spoke to the audience on the importance of developing ecosystems and strong relationships with vendors in the world of e-commerce and payment processing.

They cautioned that not all vendors are created equal and that companies need to practice due diligence when seeking out new and lasting partnerships to bring into their payments ecosystem.

Ensuring security of the payment process is not typically at the forefront of people’s mind until a problem arises. Jason and Chuck left the audience with the following 10 questions to ask their payments provider to ensure they are reducing their security risks as well as some of their costs.

Top 10 Questions to Ask Your Payments Provider:

1. Do you provide all products and services to support our payments business or do you outsource to other third party vendors?
2. Are you able to integrate with multi-channel functions: Internet, mobile, social media, physical POS, etc?
3. What is your experience and expertise in support of our specific vertical market?
4. What products and services do you offer to assist with growing my business?
5. Do you have a good working relationship with Card Brands and are there opportunities for marketing assistance or co-branding?
6. What tools do you use to monitor the qualification of payment transactions to assure lowest possible cost?
7. What business management tools do you provide and will you provide quarterly review of our business activity; e.g., Interchange qualification, Chargeback’s, Returns, Credits, Overall Cost of Acceptance, etc.?
8. Do you provide access to the various alternative payment brands, recurring payments, aggregation and internal transaction processing?
9. What tools are used to monitor, identify and manage suspect or fraudulent and declined transaction activity?
10. What are your data security best practices, annual audit results and ability to adapt to ongoing data security technologies?

By practicing due diligence and using the above questions, seeking out the best partnerships for your organizations payments ecosystem becomes a much less daunting task and sets you up for success in reducing security risk.

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Other Resources:
Who Needs PCI Compliance, exactly?
PCI Report On Compliance
PCI Compliant Tips: Working With a Hosting Provider