With a chill in the air and Christmas on the horizon, now is the perfect time to focus on reviewing payment processes and costs. It will be well worth the effort when the busy festive season arrives. Rob Crutchington, CEO of Encoded guides us through the essentials of fast, frictionless and affordable payments.
A snapshot from the British Retail Consortium (BRC) showed total retail sales grew by 3.1% year on year in June this year against a decline of 0.2% in June 2024.
While great news for business, last summer’s global tech outage that froze card payments and recent high-profile data breaches are reminders of how vital a robust payment infrastructure is. It is never too soon to review just how secure your payments are and how much they are costing.
Here are my three top tips for reducing costs while improving customer experience
1. Renegotiate your merchant services account
Have a look around and reduce payment costs by taking advantage of new offers. For example, an Encoded Merchant Services Account is currently offering a guaranteed 10% saving on existing fees*. For 25 years Encoded has been providing payment services exclusively to top businesses and global brands. Now we are open to businesses of all sizes, offering Merchany Accounts with a price saving guarantee.
2. Check your payment gateway makes the most of least cost acquiring
Merchants may have accounts with multiple acquirers which offer varying rates, for different card schemes and types. As an independent Gateway Services Provider, Encoded is not linked to an acquiring bank and as such offers a cost-effective alternative for routing payment transactions. Encoded’s Payment Gateway can interact with numerous acquirers and gateways on a per-transaction basis. This allows merchants to customise their gateway to each transaction and a specific acquirer based on their own criteria – leading to cost savings.
As an example, a merchant can set a rule to automatically route transactions with high-risk customers to low-risk payment options. Or select a channel that offers the current lowest cost for transactions. Routing payments in real-time to the most cost-effective merchant service provider makes sound business sense and this dynamic least cost acquiring functionality can slash costs. Check out what is currently happening with your provider.
3. Reduce Compliance Costs by Descoping for PCI DSS
Encoded’s token vault securely holds card data to enable one-click, recurring and subscription payments. As the token vault is acquirer-agnostic, this means that merchants can benefit from intelligent routing and least cost acquiring functionality while reducing the cost of compliance.
