Payment Method Management Made Easy By Sally Curran
May 19, 2008
If you want to provide alternative payment methods for your customers, but don't have the time and staff to manage the set up, integration and updates, CardinalCommerce can help.
CardinalCommerce is a hosted solution that enables e-tailers to offer customers alternative payment methods through a single integration platform.
One for All
CardinalCommerce is based on a merchant platform called Centinel, said Matt McDowell, vice president of Merchant Services. It's a hosted platform with a generic set of APIs (application program interface) that serves as a direct connection to a dozen payment platforms, including Google Checkout, BillMeLater and PayPal. Most merchants connect with three or four alternative payment groups-the initial integration gives you Verified by Visa and MasterCard Secure Code and you can select further payment methods from there.
McDowell explained the idea was to make the connection to Centinel so generic that e-tailers wouldn't have to reinvent the wheel each time they wanted to add, remove or modify their account with an alternative payment method. Generally speaking, 75 to 85 percent of the work managing payment methods involves turning them on and off for whatever reason, said McDowell, and CardinalCommerce assumes responsibility for those tasks, as well as any necessary upgrades that are released.
Manage Payment Methods
CardinalCommerce isn't a payment option unto itself. Rather, it is an add-on service that allows merchants access (beyond Centinal) to all alternative payment methods, said McDowell. It's an ideal option for small e-tailers, many of whom don't have the staff, expertise, or time to research and integrate a slew of payment plans, he said. With one integration, an e-tailer can add, subtract, or modify any number of payment options. Big merchants have the resources to do so (and generally don't like to outsource this sort of work), and as such, CardinalCommerce can help small e-tailers gain even footing with the big guys.
CardinalCommerce provides integration with all versions of any particular payment service, said McDowell, so for example, all iterations of PayPal, including PayPal Pay Later and PayPal Express Checkout, are supported. Another benefit is that the company has partnerships with alternative payment providers, so it can negotiate beneficial contracts and competitive rates.
McDowell explained that the company's roots are in Verified by Visa and MasterCard Secure Code and expanded to PayPal when eBay was trying to grow that portion of its empire. There are about 32,000 merchants worldwide who take advantage of CardinalCommerce, although at any given point, between 5,000 and 15,000 are actually live. (This is because many of its users are shareware users-McDowell said that CardinalCommerce deals with a good number of Digital River vendors.) For testimonials and case studies, visit the company Web site.
Integration and Price
CardinalCommerce integrates into an existing shopping cart. McDowell said it generally takes between 20 and 40 hours to make the initial connection, conduct testing and launch the platform. The company has staff that can complete the integration, as well as tech support personnel to help those who stumble a bit as they integrate the platform on their own. After an e-tailer gets the platform up and running, CardinalCommerce can serve as a level-one support provider, as well.
In regard to pricing, cost varies depending on the number of transactions completed. There's a fairly nominal initial startup fee in addition to a monthly rate. (Interested merchants should contact CardinalCommerce for rates specific to their situation.) However, merchants will likely recoup these monies over time (as mentioned, CardinalCommerce can often help negotiate lower rates with individual merchants). Also, because customers are more apt to purchase something when there are more options with which to pay, sales are more likely to increase, as well. Likewise, CardinalCommerce claims that its product helps weed out fraud, which is obviously beneficial to the bottom line.
Sally Marek Curran is a frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com.
Do you have a comment or question about this
article or other e-commerce topics in general?
Speak out in the SmallBusinessComputing.com E-Commerce Forum.
Join the discussion today!
Tools:
Add ecommerce-guide.com to your favorites Add ecommerce-guide.com to your browser search box IE 7 | Firefox 2.0 | Firefox 1.5.xReceive news via our XML/RSS feed
IE 7
Firefox 2.0
