The popularity of non-cash transactions like credit card payments, direct bank account debits, and mobile payments continues to soar every day. In North America alone, the number of non-cash payment transactions may exceed 198 billion by 2023.
That’s one of the reasons why software vendors are looking to develop solutions with integrated payment processing capabilities for businesses. However, building a payments ecosystem from scratch comes with its fair share of challenges. Thankfully, plug-and-play solutions like Stax Connect can make your life a lot easier, saving you time, money, and resources.
In this article, we’ll review two payment integration solutions—OpenEdge vs Stax Connect—and see which of these might be a better fit for ISVs looking to facilitate payments for small businesses.
Join the Payments-Led Growth Movement
Sign up to keep up-to-date with the latest trends in payments, vertical SaaS, and technology from industry experts.
OpenEdge Payments Vs. Stax Connect: Features
Let’s begin by looking at the key features of OpenEdge and Stax.
OpenEdge Payments
Headquartered in Lindon, Utah, OpenEdge Payments (now called Global Payments Integrated) is a division of Global Payments Inc., a company that specializes in payment technologies and services for issuers, merchants, and consumers. Besides enabling payment processing for sub-merchants, OpenEdge also offers secure payment solutions that ISVs can easily integrate into their offerings. Here are some of its most notable features:
OpenEdge View: This is a proprietary dashboard from OpenEdge that offers transaction management and reporting functions both for single- and multi-location businesses. Users can quickly search through the data using various filters. It also includes a virtual terminal for processing online payments.
Decline Minimizer: OpenEdge automatically updates outdated or expired card data. This reduces instances of cards getting declined and saves time and effort for sub-merchants (who don’t need to manually update them). They also offer an address verification feature for added security.
Supports a Variety of Payment Methods: This includes credit cards, debit cards, ACH payments, mobile payments, gift cards, and also allows you to set up recurring payments. Next-day funding is available on ACH and credit card processing.
Customer Engagement Suite: OpenEdge also offers detailed analytics and other tools to help your customers make better decisions and grow their business. Sub-merchants can learn how they fare against the competition and understand their customers better with these tools.
Quick Onboarding and Activation: The OpenEdge solution enables providers to onboard sub-merchants immediately (after completing a short application form) and start processing payments in a matter of hours instead of days.
Stax Connect
Stax Connect is a fully managed payments facilitation solution from Stax that enables SaaS companies ISVs to build a complete payment ecosystem from scratch—in as little as 30 days. Here are some of its most prominent features:
Command Center: A detailed dashboard that provides insights into onboarding, merchant management, and payment activity. It also allows you to provide customer support, assign unique roles to your support team members, and submit tickets to the Stax team if you need additional help.
Bank Sponsorship: Getting a bank sponsorship is one of the most tedious aspects of building a payment ecosystem. But Stax Connect allows you to leverage our longstanding relationship with the world’s leading sponsor bank, so your customers can start taking payments in the shortest possible time and with minimal financial investment.
Tokenization: The Stax Connect solution securely tokenizes a cardholder’s payment info, so you don’t have to deal with such sensitive details directly or worry about storing them securely.
Risk Management: Stax’s in-house risk team validates and monitors all payments on your platform, so you don’t have to hire risk analysts for the job. Our solution is also PCI DSS compliant and includes a Dispute Manager API to help you resolve chargebacks and disputes quickly.
Pre-built Enrollment Platform: This allows you to track and manage your enrollment pipeline with detailed underwriting stats, deposit reporting, and user-onboarding tracking. The Stax API ensures compliance with all FINCEN regulations so you don’t have to wait an eternity for underwriting approval. Instead, your customers can start taking payments in just 20 minutes.
Sales & Marketing Engagement: SaaS and ISVs get access to customized marketing plans. Stax done-for-you sales and marketing programs are built to ensure partners truly maximize the value of their platform integration to best serve end-users.
Settlement Engine: This automatically transfers funds to user accounts according to a set schedule. By eliminating the need for manual settlements or funneling payments, ISVs don’t need to worry about the associated regulations.
OpenEdge Payment Integrations Vs. Stax Connect
OpenEdge offers a comprehensive API library for developers to integrate payments functionality into websites, POS devices, mobile apps, or other SaaS solutions. They also provide extensive documentation as well as support from their engineering team to help you navigate any issues you might face.
Stax’s API allows you to enroll sub-merchants, set up invoices, recurring payments, and manage users or disputes easily. The Stax Mobile SDK allows your customers to accept payments from Android and iOS devices while tokenizing the payment information. This lets you set up recurring payments without storing cardholder information, and ensuring PCI compliance.
OpenEdge Payment Pricing
OpenEdge doesn’t showcase its pricing on its website. But most reviews suggest that there are many customer complaints about the non-disclosure of fees by their sales teams. OpenEdge is known to work with independent sales agents (besides their in-house staff) who often tend to quote higher prices and aren’t transparent about hidden clauses.
Stax, on the other hand, never works with third-party sales agents, so you can rest assured that you’ll work directly with the company. Stax Connect partners also benefit from generous and customized revenue-sharing programs as well as their sales and marketing support.
As a Stax partner, you can set your own pricing structure and model based on the payment offerings and features you provide to sub-merchants. What’s more, you have access to direct interchange rates, thus helping you create even more value for your business and your users.
Contact us today for a consultation to see what works best for you.
Pros and Cons of OpenEdge Payments Vs. Stax Connect
OpenEdge is a feature-packed solution. Besides supporting a variety of payment methods, it gives customers access to advanced analytics and customer engagement tools. This means that ISVs can add more value to their customers.
The downside is that they don’t have a lot of great reviews, mostly to do with the lack of transparency associated with independent sales agents.
Stax Connect’s pre-built enrollment and bank sponsorship features ensure that you can build a complete payments ecosystem in the shortest possible time and with very little investment. Plus, its transparent custom pricing and top-notch support make them a reliable partner for ISVs looking to monetize payments.
The downside is that at present, Stax Connect only works with companies having a presence in the US.
OpenEdge Customer Support
OpenEdge offers dedicated support channels for their clients, developers, as well as for merchants or businesses needing tech support. They provide 24/7 email and call support besides a dedicated portal for developers.
Stax Connect prides itself on its excellent customer support. Our team guides you every step of the way as you build your payment ecosystem. We also provide access to a dedicated partner success manager who can help you out whenever you hit a wall. Stax offers user support at a variety of levels, based on your needs as well as the sub-merchants’. This means you and your users can benefit from a team comprised of real payment experts. Plus, you can always reach a support team member by contacting the number listed on our website. See below how Stax Connect’s team helped support Big Time’s explosion of growth by integrating payments.
Customer Ratings and Reviews
OpenEdge doesn’t seem to have great reviews with most complaints being about poor customer service and undisclosed fees. It has 1.1 out of 5 stars on CardFellow, based on 21 unverified reviews, and 2.9 stars on GetApp, based on 25 reviews. Merchant Maverick has given them a 3-star rating while CardPaymentOptions have given them 3.5 stars.
Stax mostly has excellent reviews with a 4.4 rating on Trustpilot (based on 649 reviews), and a 4.8 rating on GetApp (based on 19 reviews). Merchant Maverick has given them a 5-star rating while Forbes Advisor has rated Stax 4.1 stars out of 5.
Final Verdict: OpenEdge Payments Vs. Stax Connect
Both companies offer robust payment solutions but when it comes to customer reviews and ratings, Stax Connect emerges as a better option. OpenEdge has a feature-packed platform but the company doesn’t have the best reputation as far as customer service or pricing transparency is concerned.
Meanwhile, Stax is well known for building true partnerships with ISVs and SaaS companies. We cultivate win-win relationships with our partners and strive to craft payments offerings and revenue-share models that maximize value for you and your sub-merchants.
FAQs OpenEdge Payments vs Stax Connect
Q: What are OpenEdge Payments and Stax Connect?
OpenEdge Payments and Stax Connect are payment integration solutions aimed at facilitating non-cash transactions for businesses. These solutions help simplify integrated payment processing for software vendors (ISVs), SUS (Software as a service) platform providers, and small businesses.
Q: What are some key features of OpenEdge Payments?
OpenEdge Payments offers a variety of notable features. Some of them include OpenEdge View – a transaction management interface; Decline Minimizer – a feature facilitating automatic card data updates; support for various payment methods; a customer engagement suite; and quick onboarding and activation for sub-merchants.
Q: What are some key features of Stax Connect?
Stax Connect provides features like the Command Center for insights into onboarding and payment activity, bank sponsorship, tokenization of payment information, risk management, a pre-built enrollment platform, sales & marketing engagement, and an automatic fund transfer mechanism via its settlement engine.
Q: How do OpenEdge Payments and Stax Connect facilitate integrations?
OpenEdge Payments offers a comprehensive API library for developers to integrate payment functionality into various platforms like websites, POS devices, mobile apps, and SaaS solutions while also providing extensive documentation and support. Stax Connect uses an API to allow for the enrollment of sub-merchants, invoice setup, recurring payments management, and user and dispute management.
Q: How does the pricing for OpenEdge Payments and Stax Connect compare?
OpenEdge Payments does not provide pricing details on its website and there have been concerns raised about a lack of transparency in the pricing model. Stax Connect works directly without third-party sales agents, offering customized revenue-sharing programs and sales and marketing support to their partners. Stax partners can also set their own pricing structure based on the payment offerings and features provided to sub-merchants.
Q: What customer support do OpenEdge Payments and Stax Connect offer?
OpenEdge Payments offers dedicated support channels, including 24/7 email and call support and a portal for developers. Stax Connect provides a comprehensive support structure, including a dedicated partner success manager, and caters to support needs at various levels based on user needs.
Q: What are some of the key differences between Stax Connect and OpenEdge Payments as per customer reviews?
OpenEdge Payments’ downsides, according to reviews, are associated with its customer service and undisclosed fees. On the other hand, Stax Connect receives positive remarks about its transparent pricing, top-notch customer support, and short payment ecosystem setup times, with the main downside listed being that it currently only operates in the US.
