Why a Multi-Payment Gateway is a Game-Changer

If your business is scaling and expanding into new geographic regions, it may present challenges in collecting receivables. You’ll want to offer the right technology to ensure your customer payment data and information is secure, yet also provide a wide range of payment methods at the same rates your customers are used to. One solution to this may be to implement multi-payment gateways.

What are Multi-Payment Gateway Systems?

Multi-payment gateway systems are services that facilitate B2B payments from different payment processors across different geographic regions and currencies. Many payment service providers, such as Stripe and BlueSnap, combine multi-gateway payment processing with payment gateway integration. Both payment gateways and payment processors integrate with other parts of your business software such as ERPs, accounting software and A/R management and automation to streamline the entire A/R process.

Key Components of Multi-Payment Gateway Systems

As you scale, you’ll want to ensure your customers an exceptional customer experience while keeping the accounts receivables processes manageable. That means you’ll need to ensure that customers can pay in the most convenient way for them while minimizing declines transactions and latency. Typically, multi-payment gateway systems must include a variety of components to deliver this exceptional customer experience.

These components include the ability to:

• Support multiple currencies. Many payment gateways do not support more than a few currencies. When businesses connect to multiple payment gateways, they give international companies the choice to continue paying receivables in their current currency and use the payment gateway that delivers the best support for that region.
• Enable multiple payment methods. This should include debit and credit cards, local bank transfer, ACH/echeck, wire transfer and electronic funds transfer. When customers have more options to pay, it makes it more convenient and enhances the customer experience.
• Deliver intelligent transaction routing. Select the preferred payment gateway customers use based on predefined criteria such as payment method, geographic region, currency, transaction fees, etc. Intelligent routing may also include payment redirection for alternative options in the event of operational disruption or downtime.
• Help automate the A/R process. When integrated with other business processes such as an ERP, a customer payment portal, accounting software and an A/R management and automation platforms, it can eliminate much of the manual processes involved in A/R. For example, it can automate payment reconciliation, payment workflows, A/R collections, reminders and confirmation. This in turn helps streamline the A/R process and reduce overhead.

Benefits of a Multi-Payment Gateway for Customer Payment Portals

High processing fees, ineffective support for different payment methods and currencies and slow transaction times are all reasons to push for alternative payment gateways. The benefits a multi-payment gateway provides both enhances the user experience and makes it easier for your business to streamline your receivables.

These benefits include:

• Better geographic coverage.  Many gateways may support a specific region but have limited support for different currencies. As you expand into new markets, you’ll want to consider both multi-vendor payment gateway systems in addition to multi-currency payment gateways. This provides customers with options to use the payment gateway that offers the payment methods, currency and transaction processing times that best suits their needs.
• Increased flexibility. Since each business has often negotiated the best processing rates with its own payment provider, you’ll want to cater as much as possible to each customer by allowing them to continue to use their own payment providers. At the same time, offering customers the ability to use multi-gateways payments helps to avoid vendor lock-in, increased fees and any business disruptions that might affect your ability to collect receivables and impact your cash flow.
• Optimized performance. With a multi-channel payment gateway you can ensure that payment is supported across different geographic regions, regardless of the payment method and reduce your decline rates and latency times while doing so. Different payment gateways may take different approaches to performance optimization. For example, some may focus on transaction speed while others rely on machine learning algorithms for optimization.
• The ability to mitigate any operational downtime. When you rely on a single vendor to collect receivables you risk the possibility of customers not being able to pay in the event that the payment gateway is down. Offering multi-payment gateways ensures that the payments can be rerouted to another payment provider if necessary and your business won’t be affected in terms of cash flow.

How Gaviti Supports Multi-Payment Gateway Processing

Gaviti’s Self-Service Payment Portal integrates with multiple payment gateways and processors which include Stripe and Bluesnap, among others. However, these are only a few elements of the invoice-to-cash A/R management and automation platform that work together to streamline the entire A/R process.

These modules include:

• Collections Analytics. Deliver comprehensive collections analytics and automatic AI-powered insights such as measurement of both team and individual collector performance, potential for improvement in performance or patterns in customer data that point to specific customer trends.
• Cash Application. When using the Self-Service Payment Portal, automated cash application ensures real-time reconciliation, expediting the cash application process and reducing processing delays. In addition, multi-bank connectivity enables cash management from a variety of sources.
• Credit Monitoring and Management. Streamline and automate the credit request and approval process from form submission to approval and ongoing monitoring. This includes taking data from the collections analytics and setting credit limits in real-time, minimizing the risk of bad debt.
• Disputes and Deductions. Track and categorize customer disputes, identifying patterns and taking proactive measures to resolve similar ones more quickly in the future. Resolve any discrepancies quickly to maintain a healthy cash flow. As an added bonus, you’ll also have a comprehensive audit trail of deduction and dispute resolution for record-keeping and future reference.

Want to learn more about how Gaviti can help you streamline the entire A/R process? Speak to a Specialist! 

FAQs

How Easy is it to Implement a Multi-Payment Gateway System?

Implementing a multi-payment gateway system is easy as many payment providers exist that integrate with multi-payment gateways such as Bluesnap and Stripe. You need to verify which features the multi-payment gateway system offers, however, to ensure that it suits your business needs.

Can a Multi-Payment Gateway System Help Reduce Payment Processing Errors?

A multi-gateway payment system helps reduce payment processing errors by helping to route transactions to the gateway with the best support for that geographic region, currency and payment method and transaction fees.

How does a Multi-Payment Gateway differ from a Single Payment Gateway?

A multi-gateway payment has a number of advantages compared to a single gateway payment.  It typically provides support for a wider variety of currencies, better business continuity in the event of operational failures and the ability to optimize latency times and declined transactions. As a result, it is often preferable for the collection of B2B receivables. However, a single gateway payment is easier to implement and often sufficient for smaller businesses with fewer  complex needs.

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