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Evolving merchant expectations are a primary factor in Aurora Payments’ newly released Arise Payment Platform, which is intended to match sellers’ needs, says Brian Goudie, Aurora chief executive.
Announced Tuesday, the Arise platform includes same-day onboarding capability, surcharging, cash discounting, and dual- pricing options, Aurora says. It also offers acceptance of multiple payment methods, real-time data access, PCI compliant-services, and devices, and a smart point-of-sale terminal, according to the company.
Las Vegas-based Aurora, which has a portfolio of more than 27,000 merchants and $12 billion in annual processing volume, says the suite of services can be tailored to the merchant.
“We felt that being at the epicenter and owning the card-present and card-not-present platform was essential for who Aurora wants to be in this space,” Goudie tells Digital Transactions News in an email. “While small businesses have many payment-processing solutions to choose from, they rarely find a solution that solves challenges specific to their industry.”
As an example, Aurora owns NailSoft, a nail-salon and scheduler-based software offering, enabling Aurora to provide the payments and related software a salon needs. “With Arise, we will be able to integrate with software and CRM companies and stay within the Aurora ecosystem while doing so,” Goudie says.
The Arise platform affords Aurora full ownership of the technology to serve merchants, he says, adding the platform is not a consolidation of existing services.
“The core engine of the Arise Platform is built from the ground up—encapsulating Aurora leadership’s decades of experience in fintech and payment-processing services,” he says. “Today, we are a reseller for many gateways and hardware companies. I don’t see us completely walking away from some of those fabulous companies, but the opportunity to control the point of sale with our own terminal was too great.”
The POS terminal has a 5.5-inch display and can operate on multiple cellular and WiFi networks. In additional to traditional swiped or dipped credit and debit card acceptance, the new platform is compatible with contactless cards, NFC, and can process Level II and Level III transactions, which contain more detailed transaction information than a typical POS purchase. Automated clearing house and check payments are accepted by Arise, as well, the company says.
Goudie says Arise is available to its resellers, too. “We have a large partner program, and this is something they have been clamoring for,” he says. “Arise allows Aurora resellers and affiliates to have full ownership of their own book of business by selling their own sell-rates, managing their agents and merchants, and monitoring and growing their business via embedded business intelligence and real-time reporting capabilities of the platform.”
In related merchant news, FastSpring, a Santa Barbara, Calif.-based payments provider, added Apple Pay and Pix, the real-time payments service in Brazil, to its checkout services. FastSpring specializes in providing online checkout services for software-as-a-service and software companies.
