Events of the last couple of years have sent shock waves through the global economy, imposing a lasting impact on multiple business verticals and market segments. The payments industry, both global and increasingly fragmented, is riddled with local regulations and paytech infrastructures. Businesses, while encouraged to grow more internationally, have to find ways to work around multiple choke points. These include political uncertainty, supply chain disruptions, deglobalisation, the saturation of established markets and maturing of emerging economies, the dizzying pace of innovation in paytech, and the ever-changing customer expectations, to name a few.
Both the economy and individuals rely on the business community to keep the system running – and provide services and workplaces. Yet, in today’s digital economy, merchant success is closely related to their payment service provider’s (PSP) capacity to enable uninterrupted payment flow, whether locally or internationally. Thus, many service providers seek to include cross-border payment support in their portfolio to meet the growing customer demand. This presents them with a number of challenges, including:
making sure they are able to scale quickly and deploy solutions anywhere in the world
adapting to the requirements of local payment schemes and ensuring compliance with regional regulators
constantly staying on their toes and being prepared to make adjustments in their value chain by embracing the most relevant technological developments – and operational and business models
orchestrating transaction flow in the most reliable and cost-effective way possible.
Payment gateways are commonly considered the go-to option for payment acquiring. However, a full-featured solution, such as the DECTA White Label Payment Gateway, can offer greater depth and versatility in extending your service coverage and enabling a complete cross-border payment cycle for your customers – merchants and fintechs alike.
PSPs looking to extend coverage outside their main geographic jurisdiction need integration with local acquiring banks and payment methods in each country in order to onboard local businesses and international companies who wish to operate in that market.
A payment gateway can enable you to set up technical integrations with any acquiring financial institution that meets your current payment requirements. Further, it allows you to route payments to the bank that is most favourable for you and your customers.
To facilitate cross-border payments, you must assure compliance with the requirements of regulatory authorities in each country your business is present. A payment gateway allows you to integrate directly with financial institutions, security service providers, and local payment schemes.
A separate and important set of compliance requirements is dictated by data protection laws demanding that payment data does not leave the country of origin. A cloud-based payment gateway solution allows you to scale quickly and set up your payment services locally, anywhere in the world where AWS infrastructure is available.
Not only does the technological landscape change over time, but it also varies significantly from one region to the other. Technical integrations help service providers quickly adopt features and functionalities necessary to operate in target markets. This may include integrating local payment methods, business automation platforms, point-of-sale networks, and other third-party services.
Depending on how a particular gateway solution is set up, it can either have a fixed number of ready-to-use integrations – or allow you to pick and choose any additional services for optimal performance.
An often overlooked use case for payment gateway technology is running it as a single control panel for your day-to-day business operations. Apart from functioning as a hub for key service integrations, it can provide valuable back-office capabilities. These include compliance and onboarding automation, standard and custom reporting, sub-merchant account management, and providing uniform payment data for BI insights.
With the global payments industry growing bigger and becoming busier in the past few years, the competition among PSPs has also increased. How can a payment gateway solution help your business stay competitive and retain your market share? Here are some examples to consider:
Quick development cycle and short time-to-market – this ensures that you can bring your payments services to new markets faster. For instance, the DECTA White Label Payment Gateway can be set up in just three weeks anywhere in the world.
White-labelling options – these help establish your brand and build a more trustful relationship with your customers.
High SLA uptime – it is good practice to aim for 99.99%, which ensures you can provide reliable, uninterrupted payment services.
Customisability and quick response time – solutions that offer quick on-demand customisations enable you to roll out new services and features in the shortest time possible.
The cost-saving advantages of a payment gateway solution spread beyond initial product pricing, and they bridge into cutting operational and business expenses:
Adopting a market-ready solution helps PSPs save significantly on custom solution development.
A simplified and standardised integration process helps reduce costly developer hours.
Solution providers with internal teams of developers and support professionals can ensure that all the necessary developments and integrations will be handled timely and accurately, providing the necessary support and maintenance afterwards. This improves accountability and helps avoid hidden costs.
Sending payments to the acquirer offering the best terms and interchange rates helps you save on per-transaction fees.
Functional and business requirements vary greatly across the payments industry. Adopting a payment gateway solution that’s right for your industry and market segment makes it easier to anticipate changes in your business flow and helps you adapt to the latest developments in tech quickly, remain competitive, and build trustful customer relationships.
This editorial piece was first published in The Paypers' Cross-Border Payments and Ecommerce Report 2022–2023, which taps into the fast-growing cross-border market and provides a comprehensive overview of trends and developments that are pivotal in this space, being the ultimate source of information for ecommerce businesses interested in expanding globally.
Norberts Millers is the Payment Gateway Product Owner at DECTA. Norberts has been active in the payments IT industry for 7+ years, always eager to learn more about clients’ needs from various perspectives. He has carried his curiosity-driven approach through multiple roles – support, compliance, business analysis, and now product ownership. His in-depth understanding of the industry allows him to deliver modern payment solutions for a variety of clients, from small ecommerce merchants to major financial institutions.
About DECTA
DECTA is a global online payment processing company. We are a principal member of Visa and Mastercard networks, with expertise in providing integrated services for acquirer and issuer processing, online acquiring, payment card issuing, and hosting a proprietary payment gateway. Our 2,000+ customers include online merchants, banks, PSPs, and corporate clients across 32 countries.
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