INTERNET ACQUIRING FROM A TO Z

Mutt

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Content
  1. What is Internet acquiring
    1. Mechanism of work
    2. Connection
    3. Integration
  2. Types of acquiring partners
    1. Acquiring banks
    2. Payment aggregators
  3. Main characteristics
    1. Tariffs
    2. Support
    3. Reservation
    4. Security and fraud monitoring
    5. Payment form
    6. Additional functions
  4. How to choose the perfect acquiring

What is Internet acquiring
  • Internet acquiring is payment for goods and services by credit card on the Internet.
  • Merchant acquiring is an offline payment for goods and services (the same terminal in a supermarket).
  • Mobile acquiring is an offline card payment using a special device (MPOS) and a phone / tablet.

Mechanism of work
To choose the perfect acquiring partner, it is important to understand how card payments work under the hood:
  1. In the simplest case, after choosing a product and a payment method, the store redirects the buyer to the acquiring partner's page, where the payer enters the card details.
  2. Further, the partner bank of the store (acquirer) makes a request to the IPS (International Payment System, VISA / MasterCard / MIR and others).
  3. Then the IPS requests confirmation of the operation from the bank that issued the card to the buyer (the issuing bank).
  4. The issuer may request additional confirmation from the cardholder (3DS). In parallel, checks are carried out for the likelihood of fraud in this transaction (fraud monitoring).
  5. After confirmation or rejection of the payment, the issuer broadcasts the response in the opposite direction: issuer-MPS-acquirer-store.
  6. Finally, the store transfers the goods to the buyer (for merchant acquiring) or creates an order, in the case of online payment. It should be noted that financial settlements are not made instantly: the issuer only blocks funds on the payer's card, and the money is finally transferred within a few days, depending on the settlement scheme of specific banks. However, the store is interested in receiving receipts as early as possible, so acquiring partners usually credit payments to store accounts within 1-3 days.

Connection
After choosing a partner, the connection of acquiring for the site begins with the submission of documents You will need:

  1. Registration data. For enterprises that were registered before July 1, 2002, you need to provide a certificate of entry into the Unified State Register of Legal Entities; after this date, a certificate of registration issued by the tax office is required.
  2. Certificate of registration with the tax authority.
  3. Extract from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities.
  4. All accompanying constituent documents with the marked changes made to them.
  5. Documents confirming the appointment of the chief accountant and the head.
  6. Lease agreement or ownership of real estate located at the actual address of the organization specified in the submitted application.
  7. Certificate from the bank, which confirms the presence of a correspondent account or a copy of the agreement on settlement and cash services.
  8. License for declared activities. We will separately highlight the restrictions on online sales for some product categories. According to the legislation in your country, not all goods can be sold online. For example, alcohol, tobacco, medicines are prohibited for sale.
  9. Application form or application for connecting acquiring from the selected provider.

Integration
To start accepting payments, after completing the contract, you need to carry out technical integration. There are several options:
  • Full integration. The developers of your custom website implement the acquiring partner API. The longest, but most functional way of integration. Depending on the options of the selected partner, you can customize the payment page, save card data to simplify subsequent purchases, connect not only card transactions and use other functions that increase conversion. For small sites with low turnover, this type of integration can be unnecessarily labor intensive. Additionally, it is possible to enter card data on the store side (WS-integration). To do this, you need to obtain a PCI DSS certificate and carry out a separate technical integration.
  • Modular integration. If your site is based on a popular CMS (1C Bitrix, Joomla, WordPress) and the selected partner has a special software module, your technicians can quickly set up accepting payments in the administrative panel. Thus, the integration will be faster, but technical difficulties are possible and you will not have access to all the functionality of the acquiring partner.
  • Easy integration. You can set up a redirect to the partner's payment page so that the buyer takes all the payment steps there. The fastest way to start accepting payments, but very limited in functionality.

Types of acquiring partners
Now let's talk about choosing an acquirer for a website. For the owner of an Internet resource, there are two ways to connect payment for goods or services online: conclude a separate agreement and technically connect each payment system, or use the services of an aggregator and go through the thorny path of connection only once: one integration + one agreement makes available a great variety of payment systems, from internet wallets and card payments to merchant and mobile acquiring or payment terminals.

Acquiring banks
In this case, the store enters into a direct agreement with the acquiring bank, places a current account and gets the opportunity to accept payment by cards. The bank processes payments and transfers funds to the store minus the commission.

Wishing to check the reliability of a potential consumer of acquiring services, banks require additional documents when connecting. In addition, there are restrictions on turnover: usually, connection is possible only with a monthly turnover of more than $ 10,000-20,000, for some banks it is higher.

For a large business with a large number of payments, it is often more profitable to connect each payment system directly - in this case, you can win well at the commission rate, which an integrator cannot provide. In addition, large companies usually want more customization and special options, such as full branding of the payment form, special payment scenarios, separate limits that go beyond the standard ones, integration with internal site systems, etc.

It is worth noting that if the selected bank is unavailable - for example, for technical reasons - your payments will "stop". Therefore, in order to avoid such a situation, it is recommended to have a backup channel for receiving payments. Integrators almost always have multiple processing partners to avoid stopping your payments. In addition, banks often do not have a full-fledged personal account, where employees of your site can make requests to change conditions, study the reasons for rejection of payments, or unload registers with operations performed. This is due to the fact that for most acquiring banks, the service you need is not a core service.

Additional difficulties: when researching the offers of banks, you will have to call each of them to clarify the conditions, since the sites often do not have all the necessary information. Moreover, such a direct connection will last much longer, up to several months.

Payment aggregators
Such organizations are specially created in order to simplify the life of the owners of online stores and remove some of the banking restrictions, for example, on the starting turnover. Plus, such intermediaries provide a full range of payment systems, in addition to paying by credit card. They integrate with several banks, online wallets and other systems, and then provide stores with a single API and a contract for all services at once. The store pays for these benefits with a higher commission rate.

Capabilities

1. Tariffs
Direct connection to the acquiring bank is beneficial only for large companies: an attractive 2% commission may be available only for business giants with millions of turnovers. The range of rates in the market is from 1 to 5%, depending on your type of activity (MCC in terms of MPS) and turnover.

By contrast, payment intermediaries often have balanced tariff scales specifically for small and medium-sized businesses. This is achieved through a huge number of transactions, taking into account all stores and reducing the rates on the acquirer's side for this service provider.

2. Support
Make sure the partner you choose has a 24/7/365 call center and a ticket system to handle double charges, rejected or erroneous transactions. It is also advisable to check the response time to the request: you will not like it if, when payments suddenly stop, you have to wait for hours for a response from the support service. Additionally, it is worth clarifying whether your clients can contact the support of the aggregator, or whether requests are accepted only from your employees. This affects the need to have your own support team. Here, I note that you need a transaction management tool: cancel, return, unload, and more. For this, many large integrators have a personal account. Be sure to study the functionality of the LC.

3. Reservation
Check with the selected partner what happens in the event of a technical failure. It is highly desirable that the payment partner be able to quickly (up to half an hour) manually or automatically switch your store to another acquirer. Alas, with direct integration with the bank, this is impossible, which forces you to independently solve the problem - to conclude a second or even a third agreement.

4. Security and fraud monitoring
To reduce the likelihood of fraud, there is 3D-secure technology. For the buyer, this looks like an additional confirmation of the transaction with a one-time code from the bank, almost always via SMS. The code is sent by the bank that issued the card (issuer). For the store, the advantage of the two-stage process is that in case of a dispute by the cardholder (chargeback), all risks and responsibility are on the issuer, and not on the store, as in the case of non-use of 3DS.

There are several options for setting up 3DS for a store:
  1. Full-3DS - double confirmation for all cards. If the card does not participate in the 3DS program, the payment will be declined. It is used for high-risk categories of activities or large payments from users anonymous for your site.
  2. 3 DS - Usually 3DS is requested by the acquirer, but at the discretion of the issuer, verification may not be carried out. Traditional setting option.
  3. Non-3DS - disabling 3DS requires additional checks of the store by the bank and is used to increase conversion (excluding a step from the payment process) for trusted transactions. For example, for regular purchases from a registered account or for payments for minimum amounts.

In addition, all data transmitted to the acquiring bank must be protected according to the PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) standard, which includes a huge set of requirements for participants in payment processes and regular audits. Make sure your acquiring partner is at least Level 2 certified. This quality mark guarantees you encrypted storage of card data and their transfer.

Note that even with such an impressive complex of protection, fraudsters can use stolen card data. To avoid this, payment systems use separate fraud monitoring services. The history of operations from this card, velocity (it is impossible to make a purchase from Dubai, and after half an hour from Moscow), whether the device was noticed in card fraud and other parameters are checked. There are external vendors where for each transaction non-personalized, summarized information about the transaction is sent and the system allows or denies the payment.

Large payment services implement them on their own to fine-tune anti-fraud rules. When choosing an acquiring partner, you can ask what kind of anti-fraud service is being used and whether it is possible to customize the rules for your store.

5. Payment form
As studies of conversion in e-commerce show, the payment form has the greatest impact on the success of a purchase: from 10 to 30% of carts are “thrown” at this step. Therefore, acquiring partners try to optimize the card data entry page as much as possible.

For example, if you set up a redirect to a partner's page, the user may leave without waiting for the redirect, or they may not see your website logo after the redirect and consider it suspicious. To fix it, there is an i-frame - embedding a payment form (acquirer page) on your website. It is also possible to implement the form in a popup window. This eliminates a step from the payment process and increases conversion.

For a closer integration of the payment form, branding is used exactly for your site, color schemes, different options for the payment page itself.
However, the number of fields on the payment form and the rules for filling them out are much more important than the color scheme. For a more likely purchase, you need to reduce the form to a minimum, request only the necessary data: card number and CVC (CVV). And then, you can also refuse the card number: card binding services and acceptance-free payments (recurrent payments) will help you.

The name of the cardholder helps in the fight against fraud, but some banks no longer consider it a mandatory field.
Be sure to check with a potential acquiring partner what options for customizing the set of payment form fields will be available to you after connecting.

6. Additional functions
In addition to basic elements such as security and 24/7/365 support, each acquirer offers a variety of add-ons to increase the ease of payment and make life easier for the store owner. These additions make acquiring perfect.
  • Holding (freezing / partial write-off): if the buyer made an order and paid for it, but the goods were not in stock, part of the payment will have to be returned. It would have taken several days without the holds. With freezing, the payment “under the hood” takes place in two stages: first, the money is only blocked on the card (authorization), and when the store confirms the completeness of the order, it is debited (cleared). The end customer will notice the difference only in case of partial or complete cancellation of the payment: the money will be returned almost instantly.
  • Recurrents (repeatable / no-acceptance / auto payments): subscription services want to increase the repeatability of orders, whether it is a magazine subscription or utility bills. To do this, the opportunity has been implemented to save the card data once and then make payments on schedule without the payer entering the card form. Sometimes an SMS confirmation is required, but only the fact of debiting, not 3DS.
  • Long entry: in order to purchase air tickets, it is necessary to transfer the flight and buyer data. Otherwise, the payer is forced to enter information twice, and since air is a risky service category, flight details will serve as an additional tool for preventing fraud.
  • Linking (saving) a card during the payment process: if you offer customers to link a card to an account to simplify purchases, many may refuse to go through a separate process. Some acquirers offer to link the card during the purchase process, which is obviously easier for the buyer and has a positive effect on the conversion in the card linking.
  • Refunds and Partial Refunds: Unfortunately, not all payment systems support refunds. With card payments, the situation is somewhat simpler, but there are some nuances, so check the terms of return in advance. Your customers will not be happy with the weekly wait. Partial refunds are also important: what if customers only return one product out of five?
  • mPOS: often small online stores do not have offline points of sale, but place stands at exhibitions and other events where there are buyers. People are used to paying by card everywhere, and you can lose some of your purchases without giving them that opportunity. At the same time, full-fledged merchant acquiring is often unnecessary or does not pay off if there is no offline point, or you have too little turnover to connect. Mobile acquiring comes to the rescue: mPOS + device connected to the Internet. The bank card is read by the mPOS device, and a special application in the phone / tablet makes the payment.
  • Mobility: check if the potential partner has a separate version of the card form for mobile platforms (iOS, Android, Windows Mobile). Otherwise, you will have to go through the path of finding an acquirer again, since not all companies support mobility or do not specifically optimize the desktop version. Also, please note that some banks and aggregators will help you integrate payment functionality into your mobile application.
  • Manual invoicing: sending an invoice to the buyer by mail / SMS / social network for payment. All that remains is to follow the link and confirm the payment. Useful for offers to buy an item that the user has booked but was not in stock last time.
  • SMS informing the buyer about the purchase. Useful if your store does not have a similar service of its own.
  • Exotic currencies and worldwide: if you are interested in foreign clients, make sure that your acquirer accepts cards from European banks and major world currencies, as well as payments from other countries. In addition, intermediaries often have offers on payment systems that are complex for direct connection, such as terminal networks in Brazil or a local Belarusian Internet wallet. In addition, there is Bitcoin and some payment systems already know how to work with it.
  • Mass Payouts: Reverse Cash Flow. The service is required for payments to your customers, for example, winnings (masspayment). Usually available on special terms.
  • Transfer Commission: Usually the commission is paid by the store. Most payment partners allow you to set up a commission charge, including from the buyer. In this case, the purchase amount will increase according to the size of the commission from the operation. Some acquirers allow you to customize the% of commission transfer, for example 50/50.

How to choose the perfect acquiring
So, we know the capabilities and features of various acquiring partners, it's time to start choosing. Below you will find an algorithm that will make it easier for the site owner to choose the best acquiring depending on the specifics of the business.

To make it easier to choose, take a look at the list of additional questions that it makes sense to ask a sales employee of a potential acquirer:
  1. Especially for the acquiring bank:
    1. Is it obligatory to open an account with your bank?
    2. Is there a personal account?
    3. Minimum turnover for connection?
    4. Full package discounts: merchant acquiring + online?
  2. Especially for the aggregator:
    1. What are the functions of a personal account?
    2. Since what year has the company been on the market?
    3. Key clients?
    4. Do you have an NPO license?
  3. What is the commission charging scheme? Fixed from transaction or%? What is the tariff grid depending on the turnover? Is there a fee for returns?
  4. Is there a connection fee?
  5. Do I need a security deposit?
  6. How long does the technical integration take and what are the options?
  7. What types of cards can I accept? Which countries?
  8. Minimum payment amount, limits for one operation / day / month from one card? Can I customize them?
  9. How long does it take to transfer funds to my account?
  10. Is a personal manager allocated to oversee all stages of the connection?

Popular acquiring banks: Check list in your country.
Popular payment aggregators: Any Checkout Money, Paymaster, WalletOne, PayAnyWay, Rapida, OnPay, Assist, Robokassa, IntellectMoney, Pay2Pay, Platron, etc.
Card Specialized Partners (IPSP): PayOnline, PayU, Uniteller, ChronoPay, Assist, etc.

The purpose of this article was not yet another comparison of payment providers. Today we have tried to help online store owners choose their own acquiring partner.

ACCEPTING PAYMENTS WITHOUT 3-D SECURE
Having already connected payment by card to the site, the owners of online stores often wonder why the conversion rate for payments with 3-D Secure is noticeably lower than when using other means of payment. This is due to the addition of a large additional step to the buying process. The client does not always have a phone at hand, SMS from the issuer does not reach the recipient in 100% of cases, the potential owner of a new product can easily change his mind along the way, etc. Fortunately, there is a way to disable 3DS for payments on the site:
first of all, you should ask your payment provider about such a service. Often, with a significant service history (from several months), a low number of fraudulent transactions and a non-high-risk category of goods, a payment partner, both a bank and an acquirer directly, can provide you with a non-3DS service channel.
For such a service, in most cases, separate limits on the amount and number of payments are applied, which are somewhat stricter than regular ones. However, it is possible that for cards of your customers participating in the 3DS program with 3DS-only settings (for cards for which 3DS is strictly required), payments will end with an error. Check this nuance with the payment company - on the acquirer's side, it is possible to set up a flexible 3DS - passing verification only in some cases. The easiest way to connect non-3DS is for online retail.
Other payment methods, besides bank cards, also have additional checks, which in their meaning (but not in name) can be equated with 3DS. For example, confirmation with a one-time password of a payment via similar Internet wallets. Unfortunately, the store owner cannot control this setting - it only depends on the buyer's preferences. However, it is worth hoping that payment systems will be able to accept requests in the API for stores, indicating that the payment must be confirmed by an additional step, by analogy with acquiring operations.
Remember, the fewer steps and steps in the payment process, the higher the conversion into paid orders. It is with the aim of raising the conversion that such services have been created as branding of the payment form, I-Frame, saving the card during the payment process, recurring operations and much more.
 

Mutt

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How to use the comparison
The tariffs of the most popular Internet acquirers are regularly updated. For an accurate commission comparison, enter your online store's monthly turnover into the calculator. It can be used to find out the rate that the acquiring bank is offering for a business of your size. You can also ask:
  • the required CMS - then the calculator will select only those banks and services that have ready-made modules for your CMS;
  • saving the card - allows you to remember the card data after the first purchase, so as not to enter them again later;
  • auto payment will be useful for housing and communal services or household appliances stores selling goods in installments;
  • holding is the freezing of part of the funds on the card with the possibility of subsequent debiting, it is required to confirm the client's solvency;
  • massive payments - relevant for various freelance exchanges;
  • Issuing invoices by reference, in Email or SMS-message is convenient for stores that calculate the exact cost of a purchase manually after placing an order.
 
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