6 Ways to Deliver Better Integrated Payments Experiences for Your Software Users
Customers are increasingly leaning towards brands that solve their problems while providing a seamless, consistent, end-to-end experience. This presents SaaS companies with a unique opportunity. By providing integrated payments solutions as part of their offerings, not only can they deliver greater value to their customers but also generate additional revenue streams for themselves.
Cash is almost a thing of the past now. A 2020 study by the Federal Reserve found that only 19% of Americans still use cash for payments. As such, non-cash and digital payment methods like credit and debit cards, mobile wallets, and online payments, don’t just offer greater convenience for consumers, they also provide immense flexibility for merchants to expand their business into non-conventional spaces (think pop-up stores, mobile dog groomers, etc.).
For this reason, SaaS providers that offer integrated billing and payments as part of their software can gain a significant competitive edge while boosting customer loyalty. However, most don’t have a great understanding of what features may add the most value to their customers. In this post, we’ll discuss 6 ways in which software companies can offer exceptional integrated payment experiences to their customers.
Learn More1. Offer Payments as Part of Your Native Packages
Convenient, on-the-go payment solutions are a basic customer expectation these days, and businesses that don’t provide such flexibility are likely to fall behind the competition. Most consumers find it inconvenient to be redirected to an external site to complete their checkout.
If you can offer an integrated payment infrastructure (that supports a range of payment methods) as part of your native packages that don’t require customers to use third-party payment processors, your solutions are likely to be in extremely high demand. Essentially, they can be a one-stop-shop for your customers.
Native packages are a great way to provide an easy, seamless, and controlled payment experience to your software users. Their customers can easily load their card info, set up a security PIN, and start making purchases right away. There’s no need to re-enter card info for future purchases as well.
Most importantly, it enables their customers to make payments on their website or app directly without having to use a third-party payment processor. And with features like tokenization, your software users can securely process recurring or card-not-present payments without ever having to worry about handling any sensitive payment info directly.
This is also a great way to future-proof their business by facilitating the adoption of new modes of payment in the future.
2. Provide a Branded Payment Experience
Businesses today strive to provide a consistent brand experience across every marketing channel and customer touchpoint. This is because such consistency can boost loyalty and create a strong positive impression in the minds of their customers.
Allowing your software users to facilitate payments through a portal that has your branding on it can greatly elevate the customer experience. Depending upon your business needs, you can choose to provide a fully or partially branded experience to your software users.
For example, with Stax Connect’s full API enrollment, you can allow the payment enrollment to happen within your app or website itself. Your users won’t need to leave the platform at all—right from application to approval. This ensures that they have a consistent branding experience at all times. However, this typically requires significant developer resources as well as API knowledge.
Small- to medium- SaaS companies that don’t have these resources can opt for the hybrid API method instead. This would allow you to start the payment enrollment process on your website or app and then redirect users to a co-branded landing page to complete their application (using the Stax Signup Application).
This still allows you to provide an on-brand experience without using too many developer resources, unlike the full API enrollment method. Since the enrollment process is not embedded in your software, you don’t require a large team of developers.
3. Make the Payments Application Process Easy
To retain their competitive edge, SaaS companies must provide a simple onboarding process with convenient and flexible payment enrollment features to their customers. Despite this, some customers may still find it challenging to maneuver their way through the process.
To encourage greater adoption of your software solution with integrated payments, you need to make sure that the payments application process is simple enough to use. This can be done in two ways.
- You can allow users to fill out the applications online, or
- You could provide a white-glove service as a helping hand to your customers.
With the white-glove service, users can benefit from the assistance of your customer-facing team who fills out the form for them. This does not require any developer support and can be easily implemented using the Stax Connect platform. Although you won’t need a dedicated team of developers to provide this service, you are going to need a good customer support team.
4. Offer Hardware under One Roof
Offering hardware as part of your software offerings is a great way to add more value to your customers. Any user who wants to process customer payments is definitely going to need hardware in the form of payment terminals (both countertop and mobile credit card readers) that support a range of different payment methods and technologies (e.g., EMV, NFC, etc). By offering hardware that’s compatible with your solution, you can position yourself as a one-stop-shop for all your customers’ needs.
5. Assist Users in Setting up Payments
Some customers may find it challenging to onboard themselves and set up their payment processing solutions. You can add more value to your offerings by providing them with the assistance they may need. Based on the industries or businesses you cater to and the types of issues your users are most likely to face, you could offer a number of services besides your product offerings. These may include:
- Configuring the software or payment terminal settings
- Integrating the software with other apps
- Migrating the data to the platform
- Training their team on using the product
6. Have a Dedicated Support Team Available
A dedicated support team that can answer and address all payment-related concerns of your users can greatly elevate the customer experience you offer. When your team is easily accessible, it adds to customer satisfaction and helps build loyalty towards your brand.
Payment failures are one of the biggest issues faced by merchants and this can result in serious customer churn. Of course, a merchant can manually process any failed payments after speaking to the customer. But this has serious implications on administrative costs, cash flow, and profitability. Not to mention the high risk of human errors, and wastage of time and resources.
Many SaaS companies that provide integrated payment solutions, leverage algorithms to reduce failures and improve the success rates of payment retries. This is essentially a pre-emptive action that can help merchants avoid the huge administrative costs that come with manually handling failed payments.
Likewise, by ensuring that your customers can reach a live person whenever they need any help with payment-related issues, you can add greater value to them. Stax Connect’s partner-centric dashboard allows you to assign unique roles to your support team members and give them access to the info they need (e.g., enrollment status, payment activity, etc.) to be able to resolve customer issues. Plus, you can also reach out to the Stax team for any additional support, right from the dashboard.
Final Words
In the current landscape, SaaS companies that can facilitate a more connected and streamlined experience for their users will always have an edge over others in the market.
SaaS solutions with integrated payments allow businesses to process customer payments securely and conveniently thereby improving the customer experience. But if you want to truly stand out above the competition, focus on ways you can add more value to your offerings. And that starts with choosing the right payments partner for your needs.
Stax Connect can help you provide a frictionless onboarding process for your software users while giving you greater peace of mind. With its top-notch customer support, pre-built enrollment platform, and enhanced risk management capabilities, Stax Connect can help you build a payments ecosystem from scratch in as little as 30 days.
Contact us today to learn how we can help you deliver seamless payment experiences to your customers that boost loyalty and retention.