#PAYMENT PROCESSING HOW TO#

Some of the solutions have turned out to be better than others and all companies seem to have advantages and disadvantages. Over the years, companies have offered businesses all sorts of solutions to the problems of safely collecting and transferring payments between other businesses. Even the cash payments which are collected from the retail store and moved to the bank or processing center are taken in moving safes – accompanied by armed security guards. The store can reasonably assume that the credit card details they collect and submit every day are kept safe by the credit card companies, and the payments from the customer will be delivered to them in full, and not intercepted en route. The stores are able to check the ID of the customer right there in the store. Customers might stand in line at a retail store with their purses in their hand, but they don’t expect a thief to run past them snatching at their money. Then, the product or service has to move in the right direction, and arrive on time as well.Īll of the movement of billing, payments, products and services has to happen in a way that’s secure and trustworthy. The payment has to then be transferred from the business buyer’s bank account to the business seller’s bank account. From the business seller to the business buyer. The request for a payment has to travel from one business to another business.

Nowadays, the “paper trail” may not be actual paper, however the trail has to be a followable trail. The paper trail has to be clear enough to ensure that requests can always be tracked, monitored and approved, and that payments can always be reviewed and audited. Instead, businesses that sell to other businesses often have to go through complicated processes of issuing invoices, collecting payments and returning receipts. A business, especially a very small business such as a freelance business – certainly doesn’t have cash desks where their customers can line up with their purchases and their credit cards at the ready.

These payments can be steep and neither buyer nor seller wants to pay the credit card fees, if they can avoid them. In the B2B arena, the businesses may never even meet their customers, and previously many businesses didn’t have the ability to accept and bank payments in cash. Most businesses sell to fewer buyers than the big retail chains. But for B2B, businesses selling to other businesses, the payment process has always been much more complicated. Paper and coin, checks, and credit cards, the new credit card chip readers attached to giant corporations that collect the debt and, for a fee, transfer it to the retailer’s bank accounts. They have cash desks that can receive any manner of payment. Retail stores that sell directly to customers have it easy.

#PAYMENT PROCESSING HOW TO#

If all goes well - and the product works correctly and is marketed well - every business runs into one problem of their own: how to receive payments for their products or services. They will have to identify the various problems of the business, analyze them, design a process, research the market, then turn that solution into a product that other people can buy and benefit from. Businesses of any size have to think about solutions.

Payment processing