How can you evaluate a Payment Systems vendor's ability to meet your needs?

Lowering costs, improving auth rate performance, launching in new markets, launching new sales channels, reducing fraud, streamlining your and operations, upgrading your tech stack… there are so many different things that can affect your choice! Before going trough a vendor selection process and/or and RFP, it's important to clarify what are the OUTCOMES that you want to achieve. This will help you to focus, narrow down the list of vendors, and - ultimately - to choose the right one for you.

Understand the vendor's pricing model and fee structure to look for transparency in pricing and assess whether it aligns with your budget and be aware of any hidden fees that could impact the total cost of ownership.

Evaluate the user experience of the payment system for both customers and internal users, as a user-friendly interface can enhance the overall satisfaction and efficiency of your payment processes.

When evaluating payment vendors, start by listing your needs like payment types, monthly transactions, and requirements. Ask vendors specific questions about their system usability and customer experience. See if they'll demo their solution. Get references from similar businesses. Get written quotes for setup, and monthly fees and watch for hidden charges. Pricing should fit your budget. Consider customer service - you want an easy-to-contact the company. Check reviews online to see if others got good support. Go with your gut feeling and avoid pushy salespeople. Research upfront saves headaches later. Take your time to find the right payment solution fit for your business long term.

When searching for a payment service provider, you need to consider the expected volume of transactions. How many payments do I expect to process? What is the average shopping cart value? Ideally, I offer many and common payment methods to appeal to as wide a range of customers as possible.

Besides from the industry best practices and standards, in some countries you also need to be complaint with their domestic standards. In some cases there might be major changes required in the Payment System to integrate the required functionality. This in turn might impact the time to market and increase development and certification costs.

Your company might have more or less strict assessment protocols (generally, correlated with the size of the business) around compliance, security, and overall infra stability and always consider these as non-negotiable conditions of any assessment. Ensure that you fully understand the implication for your business (they will vary depending on your industry/size/focus) and prepare a security and compliance assessment checklist, so that you can re-use it saving precious time. For PII data, familiarize yourself with GDPR, CCPA, ADPPA. If handle credit card information, PCI DSS, PSD2, and card network rules. Anti Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer/Business (KYC/KYB) regulations will also be important when dealing with payouts.

Review the outcomes that you want to drive (step 1), and understand which features and functionalities will help you to achieve them. Categorize such requirements as must have vs nice to have, and compare each vendor to understand what they support. Then ask the different stakeholders involved in the assessment process (product management, engineering, business, finance, customer service…) to review them in detail and share their feedback about each vendor (1/5 rating + comments + questions). Once you've collected all the feedback, summarize it and understand which 2/3 (max!) vendors to focus on, and try to organize deep dive sessions with their teams to clarify open questions, in order to avoid surprises later on in the process.

When choosing a PSP, pay attention to the interfaces used by the payment systems and compatibility with your existing infrastructure. In addition to processing payments, other add-ons and services are also important. How is archiving done? What data evaluations are there? How can this data be further processed or what interfaces are there?

Depending on your business size, various pricing models may be available. Typically, small and medium-sized merchants with limited volume will be subject to a standard "sticker price", potentially tiered, without the ability to negotiate. For larger merchants, negotiations are possible to establish custom conditions and pricing. Key fee categories include: - Tokenization & Gateway - Acquirer Markup - Fraud Prevention & Management - FX & Payout - Support & Reporting - Ancillary Features Understand the costs involved and create an xls model to quantitatively compare different vendors, considering your past volume & future growth targets. This approach aids in forecasting costs and facilitates negotiations with vendors for better pricing.

Don't be blinded by individual, particularly attractive conditions of the Payment Service Providers when comparing prices, but always consider all the costs incurred by a payment. These include rental fees, transaction costs, minimum fees for processing as well as agreed discount and interchange rates. However, pricing should never be the sole basis for decision-making. Never underestimate the value of excellent service.

Partner support is crucial for a successful payment stack upgrade. The support model evolves with the vendor relationship: - Negotiations: at this point everyone will try to be your best friend and give their best… watch out ;) - Integration: the best partners delve deep into your business and tech stack for optimal recommendations - Optimization of day-to-day operations: this is the trickiest part to assess and manage, since incentives might start to diverge. Make sure you establish a clear support model, and get direct access to the key people (account managers, but also product managers and analysts) Last but not least… ensure access to a point of escalation for troubleshooting!

A vendor capable of fulfilling today and the future needs with capability to accept agile models and highly adaptable is the right vendor. These factors on a longer run can justify the ROI.

- Develop internal systems on Open APIs that are adaptable to changing markets. - Able to showcase test scenarios with impacts as early as possible. - Flexible and open to high tides instead of just water. - watertight process & complaint