Payment technology integration that is seamless is an important must for value added services given by independent software vendors. API connectivity for cards, echecks, and ACH transactions makes integrated payments simple.
While the ACH network is still a batch network, using an ACH Payment Gateway API to communicate with a real-time communication integration can help software applications improve their capabilities. Let’s take a look at some of the latest communication options that these ACH services for small business and gateways have to offer.
Credit card processing:
Any merchant organization that accepts payments for services or products will almost certainly need to accept credit card transactions.
Credit card transactions are communicated in real-time, which necessitates the usage of a gateway for cards, not present transactions. It’s pointless to submit a NACHA file if the gateway provider’s API also supports eChecks if a merchant organization needs to accept ACH transactions.
If the API supports both, a single integration can be used to enable both payment models. A clear advantage of using ACH services for small business is that sensitive bank checking and savings account data is never retained within the SaaS application or its servers if the API enables data tokenization.
Instead, the application can interface with the gateway in real-time to send bank data and receive a reference token that can be saved for later use. This reduces the possibility of sensitive data being stolen. While PCI criteria for ACH transactions are not currently mandated by NACHA, most ACH gateways that also handle credit card transactions will be PCI level one certified.
When you don’t have to, why take the chance of a merchant customer’s bank account data being stolen?
Risk mitigation:
Simply delivering ACH transactions isn’t enough for many merchant businesses. Additional calls can be made using a real-time gateway API, which helps lessen hazards to their firm. Here are a few real-time risk reduction techniques to consider:
- Checking the transit route number
- Checking the bad account database
- Checking the OFAC
- Checking the bank account number
- Checking the account amount
- Matching the identity to the bank account
- Confirming account ownership
Any firm that uses a software programme and needs to send ACH transactions should look into the benefits of integrating with an ACH payment gateway API.
Providing A Single Point Of Contact For reconciliation
When connecting to an ACH Payment services, you should be able to send and receive transactional data. This eliminates the need for customers to rely on a third-party programme to view or export transaction reporting into their CRM or ERP software.
Furthermore, with some ACH Payment Gateway integrations, the data flow can be live, which means that as the gateway receives data from the receiving banks, the data is posted in near real-time as it is returned to the gateway. For account departments who use the programme, reconciliation becomes a lot easier.
Assisting in the reduction of processing costs
Simply put, ACH transaction fees are far lower than those associated with credit card processing. If processing businesses do not accept ACH payment services in models where ACH processing is a viable payment option, they are wasting money.
This is especially true for businesses that rely on recurring payments as part of their business model.
It would be irresponsible to not provide an integration to an ACH Payment Gateway, regardless of whether the software application is intended for other organisations or is a one-off application for a single organisation.
Providing a Value-added service Feature
By integrating to the ACH payment gateway, software programmes that are available for other businesses to utilize in managing their client base and whose users have a demand for ACH processing provide an integrated solution that minimises time in managing and arranging ACH transactions.
Rather than having to manage ACH transactions from a separate system, a business or organisation can do so from within the application to which they are already subscribed and using to manage their customer base.
ACH Payments on a Recurring Basis While doing so necessitates some integration work, in today’s competitive SaaS industry, it’s become standard for software applications to provide this as part of their product set.
This is especially true for software products with a large user base and a subscription-based business model with recurring payments. Companies and organisations that offer subscription-based models are considerably more likely to use ACH payments than those who offer a one-time purchase model. Software programmes that do not offer subscription-based models are missing out on a crucial feature that many potential customers are seeking for.
ACH Payment Services has been offering ACH Payment Gateway solutions to companies of all sizes for over a decade. Please contact us so that we may learn more about your integration needs.