See what you can learn from other successful businesses selling payment solutions.
These days, many different types of businesses are offering payment processing services. Regardless of your business and your approach to selling merchant accounts, it’s smart to stay aware of how others are bundling payments with their products and services.
Consider how different types of companies find success in the payments space — and maybe gain some insights into how you can pivot your business to see more revenue growth.
Who businesses are contracting with for merchant services.
ISO Agents.
Independent Sales Organization (ISO) Agents primarily sell merchant services. Their ISO partners work with them so they can become experts in their offerings, stay on top of industry trends, and build payment processing into workflows so merchants can provide the best customer experiences.
ISO Agents can focus on providing merchant services to one vertical market or niche, creating a tailored offering that meets the needs of those businesses, or offering solutions to a broader range of merchants. To provide competitive solutions, some ISO Agents offer their clients additional products and services, such as point of sale (POS) hardware, software, and support.
POS VARs.
Value-added resellers (VARs) often sell point of sale systems bundled with payments for what they pitch as a do-it-all solution. You’ll often find POS VARs teaming up with ISVs to target grocery, retail, and restaurant businesses with a hardware-software combo handling essential functions like checkout and customer service.
VARs differ from ISO Agents, who typically have one ISO partner and may work with companies that use different POS software solutions. VARs can partner with multiple payment processing companies and often loyally sell one or two POS software systems. Additionally, while ISO Agents lead with payments, VARs usually focus on the POS system sale and integrate payments with the solution.
ISVs.
Independent software vendors (ISVs) may take their solutions to market with a VAR channel. However, some offer integrated payments with the solutions that they sell directly to end users. For example, they can develop solutions for verticals and niches such as veterinary clinics, nonprofit organizations, field service companies, healthcare providers, and government agencies. Developing an all-in-one solution that includes payments eliminates labor-intensive, error-prone data re-entry for their clients. That promise of higher efficiency and a user-friendly experience from packaging payments with critical systems can be a compelling prospect for many merchants.
Verticalized solutions.
A new merchant services player, “verticalized solutions,” has emerged in the past decade or so. The best-known examples are Stripe for online businesses and Square for brick-and-mortar transactions. Their main mission is to make it easy for smaller businesses and mom-and-pop shops to get up and running on a payments platform with a speed and simplicity that many legacy players typically can’t match. They’re popular, but they have their limits. Square clients, for example, can’t easily transition to ecommerce from in-person operations, and without add-ons and integrations, they may not match up with the features of more robust legacy solutions.
Banks.
Some small businesses like the relative ease and convenience of working with their bank to manage payments, especially if they’ve had that relationship for years. Financial institutions take care of the essentials like supplying point of sale devices and key peripherals and even offer digital-specific resources for ecommerce businesses, such as virtual terminals that replicate physical payment systems.
Carve out your share of the market.
It’s clear that the merchant services space is attracting a wide range of businesses. With NAB as your trusted partner, you can rest assured that we’re here to help you stay one step ahead of the pack. You can leverage our wealth of offerings to build a strong POS portfolio, serving as the bedrock of an attractive end-to-end solution. We’ll show you how to educate merchants about options such as cash discounting while helping you quickly sign and set up new prospects.
Whether you’re an ISO Agent, VAR, ISV, bank, or financial institution, you need an expert who knows the industries you serve and the payment capabilities they need. Contact North American Bancard today to take the next step toward making your mark on the industry.
