The Path to Painless Integrated Payments

By Sherrie Bryant, Marketing Director, Exact Payments

Payments integration is quicker and easier when the gateway provides developers with REST APIs and the tools and support necessary for successful projects.

As more merchants evolve into omnichannel businesses, integration equals efficiency. Integrated solutions communicate with each other and share data, helping merchants create connected IT environments and excellent customer experiences. Integrated payments, for example, ensure that payment information is automatically shared with the merchant’s point of sale (POS) or ecommerce software. It saves time – sales associates aren’t using a separate system to collect payment data and run transactions, and consumers aren’t waiting in line longer than necessary.

Also, the back office doesn’t spend time entering payment card transaction data into the accounting system – or correcting mistakes when it wasn’t keyed in correctly. In addition, integrated payments enable real-time data and accurate analysis of sales, revenues, and customer activity, helping merchants make informed decisions in the moment and build more competitive businesses.

Improving on Legacy Payments Integration Processes

Although integrated payments undoubtedly provide value to merchants, the integration process has historically been difficult, costly and time-consuming. It required developers with payments integration expertise to download and use software development kits (SDKs) for each platform a merchant could use. Additionally, EMV and contactless payment acceptance require meeting security standards and certifying the solution, and customizations mean even more time and effort.

Payment gateways that take a better approach to payments integration provide developers with REST APIs. Based on representational state transfer (REST) architecture, these APIs enable POS software or other business applications to access resources in the payments platform. Advantages of REST APIs include allowing developers to use any common programming language and a wide range of data formats. This approach makes it easier to embed payments into checkout experiences, in-person, in-app, online or at a self-service kiosk than using legacy integration processes. Furthermore, when the payment gateway offers a suite of REST APIs that connect merchants to the full range of payment methods, from credit and debit cards, mobile wallets and contactless payments, click to pay and more, they have the flexibility to deliver the payment experiences their customers prefer.

Leverage Hosted Payment Pages 

Another way to make payments integration easier is to use hosted pages for ecommerce payments. When a website directs customers to a page hosted by the payment gateway, it eliminates the need for merchants to handle or store card data within their own systems. Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance is easier because the merchant’s ecommerce solution is considered out of PCI scope. It also minimizes the number of people, both on the merchant’s staff and externally, who can see human-readable account numbers, which helps keep cardholder data secure. Tokenizing payment data – replacing it with randomly generated characters in the merchant’s system – also makes it possible for return customers to make payments with just a few clicks.

Leading payment gateways will give merchants the ability to customize their hosted payments pages to reflect their brands and add payment options and fraud prevention tools without additional coding. Furthermore, Reporting APIs give merchants the flexibility to access payments data whenever they need to, rather than waiting for a scheduled report.

Support for Successful Integrated Payments

A modern, high-performance payments platform and APIs facilitate payments integration; however, a successful project also takes support from your gateway partner. Reliable and accessible technical support will ensure projects aren’t delayed while you wait for answers and that integrations will result in the best possible performance. Ensure your payments gateway’s team has resources dedicated to technical support and that they’ll be available when you need them.

Learn More About Hassle-Free Integrated Payments     

Members of the Exact Payments team have worked in your industry and understand why payments integration is important – and how much of a challenge it could be with legacy integration processes. With our open APIs, user-friendly developer portal, documentation, testing sandbox, and technical support, we make integration as pain-free as possible.

Contact us for more information. www.exactpay.com