John Stewart January 17, 2022 https://www.digitaltransactions.net/trends-like-open-banking-and-bnpl-will-sustain-e-commerces-hot-streak-a-report-says/
Open banking, single-click checkout wallets, and the hot buy now, pay later trend will all help drive e-commerce volume worldwide in the coming five years, predicts Juniper Research in a report released Monday. This momentum is likely to push online sales long after the short-term impetus from the pandemic subsides, Juniper says.
E-commerce volume totaled $4.9 trillion globally in 2021, a figure the United Kingdom-based research firm forecasts will reach $7.5 trillion in 2026, when China will control a 37% share. Wider availability of multiple e-commerce channels, including mobile devices, will propel the overall growth worldwide, Juniper says. But along with the boom in e-commerce will come a corresponding growth in fraud via identity theft, account takeovers, and fraudulent chargebacks, the report warns. China, for example, will account for more than 40% of fraud losses worldwide in 2025, at more than $12 billion, Juniper forecasts.
Open banking is a trend by which fintechs can verify balances in consumers’ accounts and transfer funds to pay for online purchases. As standards bodies work to promulgate standards for this business, e-commerce payment providers “should … partner with specialists in … specific emerging payment areas to keep pace with changing merchant expectations around acceptance types,” the research firm says in its release, referring to digital wallets and crypto as well as open banking.
Open banking has taken on a higher profile in the global payments market with efforts by both of the global card networks to acquire firms that specialize in this area. Visa Inc. has acquired Tink AB, while Mastercard Inc. bought Aiia and Finicity Corp.
Physical goods will continue to dominate e-commerce spending, the report says, accounting for 82% of payment value by 2026. To tap into the trend, Juniper advises, payments providers should support buy now, pay later plans, which allow consumers to split purchases into four equal installments paid over a six-week period at no interest. BNPL is becoming more controversial, however, as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has launched an investigation of the option and as reports emerge that consumers with multiple accounts are more likely to miss a payment.
While still a big trend, e-commerce sales in the U.S. market cooled significantly last year as the pandemic effect lost some of its force. Third-quarter sales in 2021 reached $214.6 billion, up 6.6% year-over-year, according to the Census Bureau, which tracks retail sales. That follows an 8.9% rise in the second quarter and three straight quarters with increases of 32% or more. Fourth-quarter 2021 results are not yet available.
When you are first setting up a retail or an eCommerce endeavor, few decisions will be of as much importance as the payment provider that you choose. Your payment provider will handle each and every card transaction your online company makes, and if it doesn’t function properly, or if it has a lot of hidden fees, such as old legacy systems with long term contracts, you can be setting your business up to fail before you ever get started.
So, we are going to explain to you what you should be looking for when you reach this crucial decision in the setup phase of your business, and we will help you find a payment provider that meets your needs perfectly and sets you up to succeed in the business world.
As a general rule of thumb, there are three main factors that you really need to consider when you go to choose who you will be working with: The people involved in the transaction, the fees associated with each transaction, and how the transaction is handled behind the scenes. There are some smaller tidbits that can make a specific provider a better or worse choice, but those three factors will allow you to narrow your search down to a select few of top competitors that will truly help your company succeed.
The Parties Involved
Besides your bank and the customer’s bank, there are three different factors that go into every single one of your transactions, and a payment provider works with all three of them. There’s you, your customer, and the technology acting as a bridge between the two of you. We’ll go into more detail about all that, now.
The Customer
With this part of the transaction, we are really talking about the “issuing bank”. That’s your customer’s bank, and they handle lending the customer the money to make a purchase on your site, and they issue the card that the customer uses to make that purchase. This is your customer’s main form of interaction with the transaction process, and it’s one of the most important factors since it’s what starts the transaction in the first place. However, you have no control over this factor, and you can simply ensure that the technology, which we’ll talk about soon, makes their part of the transaction as smooth as possible.
The Merchant
This is you and your part in the transaction. You function as the merchant that the customer is engaging with, and in order to do that, you need a merchant bank to partner with and work as your company’s bank. A merchant bank functions differently than the bank you use in your day to day life. Instead of issuing you funds in advance for credit purchases and managing your checking and savings accounts, a merchant bank takes in your customers’ payments for you, and then puts those payments into a special merchant account that is a lot like a business’s checking account. Without a merchant bank, you won’t be able to succeed in the long-term with eCommerce.
The Technology Solution
Your technology, and the company handling it, is what makes a transaction possible in the first place, and there are two parts to this imperative factor: The payment processor and the payment gateway.
Processor
The payment processor is what actually handles the transaction. It moves the money between the different parties and delivers it to the banks and accounts involved. If your processor is subpar, your customer’s transaction experience will be, too. You need an up-to-date payment processor that functions smoothly and without any hassle placed on you or your customer to ensure that each customer enjoys a seamless transaction.
Gateway
The payment gateway is essentially what sends the transaction information to the payment processor. It links to your site’s shopping cart feature, and when a customer buys something, it connects to the payment processor and begins the transaction. In order to ensure that your transactions are smooth and effortless, this technological asset needs to be competent and able to easily satisfy your customers without being apparent.
How the Transaction Process Happens
The transaction process is fairly complicated, but it all takes place in a matter of seconds. In fact, it’s usually seemingly instantaneous.
Once a purchase is made, the payment gateway encrypts the transaction data to protect your customer and your business, and then it asks the customer’s bank if it will advance the funds for the customer’s purchase. If yes, the payment will be sent to your merchant account, and if not, the transaction will be denied and ended until a resolution can be found.
Once that step is completed, the funds typically end up being accessible by you the second your merchant bank acquires them and places them in your account, but you may be forced to keep a certain amount in the account to make sure you can cover any returns that pop up.
This part is not instantaneous. It can take a couple days to complete this part of the process.
Transaction Fees
This is easily the factor that you’ll want to pay attention to the most, because a lot of merchant service providers are downright misleading when they quote your rates, and you need to get a firm understanding of how a company sets up its fees to know what to actually expect from your bill.
Most often, companies will quote something like 1.8% rates to interest you and appeal to your more frugal side, but then they’ll apply all sorts of hidden fees that raise that rate as high as 11% without notifying you properly. As you can imagine, that can make your bill a bit more than what you thought it would be.
There are three rate models that are most often used:
Flat-Rate
You’re given a specific amount to pay, and whether that covers your total fees or not, that’s what you pay. You could be overpaying tremendously if you accept a quite a few low cost cards vs. the higher cost cards. The processor is banking on your acceptance of these lower cards to ensure all costs are covered.
Interchange Plus Pricing
This takes the interchange fee you pay and adds a small fixed rate on top of it. It’s not as consistent as a flat-rate fee because of the sheer amount of interchange fees out there and the number of different credit cards with all of the various reward and incentive programs.
Tiered Pricing
This is when the provider creates a few tiers of fees and charges you based on the tier your fees are in rather than each individual fee. The only bad thing about this is that the provider decides which fees go into which tier.
Other Important Things to Consider
Does your processor provide Data Security/PCI protection? What about financial breach protection, in the event you are breached?
Any business or other entity that stores, processes or transmits cardholder data must ensure that their processes meet the Payment Card Industry / Data Security Standard (PCI/DSS). Failure to do so can result in heavy fines being levied.
Understanding PCI/DSS
The PCI/DSS is a global standard defining acceptable practice for any entity involved in the storage, transmission or processing of cardholder data.
In recognition of the sensitive, confidential and valuable nature of this data the standard imposes strict regulations which must be met in full. The full requirements are detailed but are covered by 12 broad requirements. These are grouped into 6 broad control objectives as follows:
1. Build and Maintain a Secure Network and Systems – Install and maintain a firewall configuration to protect data – Do not use vendor-supplied defaults for system passwords and other security parameters
2. Protect Cardholder Data – Protect stored data (use encryption) – Encrypt transmission of cardholder data and sensitive information across public networks
3. Maintain a Vulnerability Management Program – Use and regularly update anti-virus software – Develop and maintain secure systems and applications
4. Implement Strong Access Control Measures -Restrict access to data by business need-to-know -Assign a unique ID to each person with computer access -Restrict physical access to cardholder data
5. Regularly Monitor and Test Networks -Track and monitor all access to network resources and cardholder data -Regularly test security systems and processes
6. Maintain an Information Security Policy -Maintain a policy that addresses Information Security
Any entity handling card transactions must meet the standard and be able to demonstrate (certify) that it does so. The level of certification is flexible and depends on how transactions are processed and in what volume.
A Summary of Benefits
Achieving full compliance with PCI/DSS standards is more than an obligation. It delivers genuine benefits to businesses:
– Lessen the risk of fraudulent transactions
– Prevent security breaches
-Lessen the impact should a breach occur
– Reduce your business’ exposure to risk and liability
– Provide peace of mind for your customers
– Avoid the negative PR associated with data loss
Why are These Requirements in Place?
Card transactions have grown enormously in recent years as cards become the number 1 preferred form of payment. Since no physical money is handled or exchanged as part of these transactions they are dependent on the transfer of data.
That data therefore becomes sensitive and valuable and must be protected. Failure to protect this data can lead to fraud and theft. These crimes often impact both the card holder and the merchant directly. They can also damage or even destroy the reputation of businesses or organizations involved in hacks or data breaches.
More widely card fraud has the long-term detrimental effect of eroding consumer confidence and trust – both in the individual companies affected and in the card payment industry more widely.
Millions of consumers and organizations worldwide are choosing to pay by card. And millions of businesses, professionals, traders and organizations are accepting and handling these payments. Instead of allowing an ad-hoc approach where each business sets its own level of security the PCI / DSS was imposed. This ensures a uniformly high level of data security throughout the worldwide card payment industry.
Keep your Data Secure – Don’t get caught without PCI Data Breach Protection
With more retailers than ever before embracing e-commerce, the fraud journey is becoming a focus for many. It is clear, though, why retailers have paid more attention to the customer journey. After all, in addition to shaping a customer’s overall experience, a customer’s journey determines whether or not they will make a repeat purchase. Too often, however, when focusing solely on the customer journey, the fraudster’s journey remains overlooked. To bring the fraud journey into focus, we need to understand what it really is and where retailers should be placing their efforts.
Like the customer journey, the fraud journey is the path fraudsters take when interacting with a brand. In the case of the fraud journey, we consider the actions a fraudster takes to commit fraud. Understanding the fraud journey and focusing on the fraudster’s actions will enable online retailers to dramatically reduce fraud conversion rates and ultimately prevent fraud.
It’s not by chance that the customer’s journey and the fraudster’s journey are often mentioned together. In their attempt to satisfy customers while also detecting and preventing fraud, many retailers are faced with an impossible juggling act: Do I prevent fraud or give my customers the experience they want? True, balancing between the two, enabling the paths to co-exist, is challenging, yet it can be achieved. Taking the time to understand the intricacies of the fraud journey can help reduce false positives and cut down on chargebacks.
The True Cost of Chargebacks
Chargebacks. The very word sends shivers down the spine of even the most experienced online retail fraud fighters—with good reason. Chargebacks end up costing retailers in additional fees as well as in customer dissatisfaction and it’s nearly impossible to truly evaluate the cost of chargebacks.
It’s estimated that for every $100 in chargebacks, retailers end up paying $240! But the problem with chargebacks goes far beyond any fees or penalties incurred. The issue with chargebacks is that if a customer gets to the point where they have to request a chargeback, the damage has already been done.
Why Does the Fraud Journey Matter?
Let’s consider the forecast that e-commerce is expected to make up 22 percent of all global retail sales by 2023. Or that it’s predicted that U.S. e-commerce sales will jump 18 percent due to Covid-19. E-commerce sales are at an all-time high, and there are no signs this trend is going to slow down anytime soon. This emphasizes even more the need to focus on the fraud journey. The fraud journey has an impact when building an effective chargeback management strategy and it is directly linked to customer retention and acquisition.
The fraud journey gives one an in-depth understanding of users who could be fraudsters, based on suspicious behavior. Retailers looking to up their fraud prevention and chargeback management game, need to have a clear understanding of the fraud journey. This understanding will make it easy for them to differentiate actions a legitimate user would take, from fraudulent actions. For example, a change of the shipping address upon login indicates a possible fraudulent action. Carefully considering the behavior of a legitimate customer at every stage of the customer journey can help isolate suspicious activities with more accuracy, and thus cut down on false positives.
Fraud Prevention: The Ultimate Juggling Act
Understanding chargebacks and how to prevent them, starts with understanding how retailers approach fraud prevention. In cases where retailers focus on detection and prevention at the payment stage, or even only one part of the payment stage, fraudsters are able to successfully move through their journey undetected until it is too late.
If a fraudster’s activity is detected as suspicious and flagged only at the payment stage, gives an opportunistic fraudster plenty of opportunities to monetize the service by other means before their presence is detected. This could include everything from promo abuse and referral abuse to new account fraud.
That’s exactly why a more advanced fraud prevention and detection approach is required. For example, using technologies such as behavioral biometrics will enable retailers to stop a fraudster long before the payment stage, before any real damage is done, and will help cut down on chargebacks.
Is it really that simple? Retailers are rightfully concerned with the need to ensure that detection of fraud early in the fraud journey, early enough to prevent damage including chargebacks, will introduce as little friction as possible into the customer’s journey. At times it seems retailers can’t win. If they flag an activity as suspicious based on strict rules, they might find themselves with a rise in false positives and possibly disappointed legitimate customers. Other times retailers rely on fraud detection and prevention at the payment stage, ignoring any fraudulent activity, which happens before that, throughout the customer journey. Either way, with fraudulent activities getting more sophisticated, retailers are dealing with a growing number of chargebacks due to fraud.
In-depth understanding of the fraud journey, identifying and monitoring its various touchpoints, will help retailers to reduce fraud and still maintain the balance between customer satisfaction and security.
Proactive Chargeback Management
The common passive-reactive approach to chargeback management is proving to be insufficient as fraudsters are increasingly using tools such as bots and emulators to scale their attacks. Behavioral biometrics-based fraud detection introduces a proactive approach to counter advanced fraud. As opposed to focusing on login or checkout only, and reacting too late, behavioral biometrics focuses on user behavior throughout the entire customer journey, making it easy to identify suspicious and potentially fraudulent behavior at its earliest stage, enabling to stop the fraudster in his tracks, before damage is done.
Adopting advanced technologies like behavioral biometrics will provide retailers with visibility and insight into the entire fraud journey, leading to better, data-driven decision making, pre-transaction prevention and cut down chargebacks.
SecuredTouch is the expert in adaptive fraud detection solutions for online retailers and financial institutions. Using machine learning, the technology continuously analyzes hundreds of behavioral data points to differentiate between human and non-human behaviors, human to device interactions and behavioral anomalies to provide early detection of fraud. The solution identifies sophisticated fraud throughout the customer journey while simultaneously improving the user experience. Businesses benefit from reduced drain on internal resources and increased transaction rates, ultimately leading to an improved bottom line. Today, our award-winning solutions are used by some of the world’s largest retailers and financial institutions.
By Ran Wasserman, CTO, SecuredTouch – Sponsored Content
In our second installment, we talked about NTC’s newest solution, NTC ePay. This third and final reason in this series will go over how NTC keeps your cash flow going.
Due to the history of travel businesses, many travel agencies are given a travel merchant account with monthly credit card processing volume caps. This means merchants are only permitted to handle a specific number of credit card transactions per month. Once that limit amount is reached, the merchant can no longer take credit cards for purchases that month. This keeps a business, especially an e-commerce merchant that relies on credit card payments, from operating effectively.
Imagine the impact on your travel agency when you no longer have to worry about having your cash flow stopped. We work very hard to eliminate holds and reserves on all our travel accounts.
Now imagine you getting approved for large volume.
You will agree that those two factors will have a huge positive impact on your business growth.
Most merchant providers usually hold funds from travel agents, because historical data shows that consumers are much more likely to dispute and chargeback travel agency transactions because of a change in their travel plans.
You may be wondering, why do we not hold your funds?
Well simply said, because we understand your business. NTC has been doing business with travel professionals like you for over 20 years and we understand that holding funds creates a huge hassle for your operation. We understand that cash flow is essential to your continued success.
With NTC travel agents can feel confident that they will maintain cash flow to help their business operate smoothly and efficiently without interruptions.
Why do travel merchants flag large transactions?
Many travel merchants many times run thousands of dollars worth of transactions and their processor tells them they’re going to simply hold the transaction and not pay the merchant.
We understand how critical it is to have funds available because many agents have shared how with other merchant providers, their cash flow has come to a complete halt at times.
Remember that when you choose a travel payment processor, you must be sure to choose one with experience in working with travel agencies like NTC.
At NTC, we assist you in developing and implementing your fraud prevention procedures, so that you can be proactive in identifying and correcting potential weak spots in your processing cycle.
Over these past three blog articles, we have shared the three main reasons why travel agents like you prefer National Transaction Corporation. Now we want to hear from you as to which of these three reasons is most important for your travel agency business. We’d love to read your comments below.
Travel Agents prefer NTC ePay because they get paid faster with their very own “Buy Now” button or simply by requesting payments by email!
Last installment, we shared how the security of NTC Payment Processing works for you. In this second part of our three-part series, we discuss the ways that the technology behind NTC ePay helps your travel agency.
NTC ePay offers travel agents the most innovative technology because it is fast, mobile friendly and easy to use.
Whether you use Quickbooks, Peachtree or any other accounting application, you can enter the invoice number into the ePay application for reconciliation, and you can customize your pricing to any amount you choose. Your agency can create invoice and payment links that can be posted to your website or any social media website for payment.
Don’t you like it when everything seems to work together, making your day a lot easier? Technology is something that can get your daily workflow to go smoothly, and NTC ePay works for you. If you need a customized solution to go with your workflow, NTC can make most anything a reality for your business workflow.
National Transaction Corporation is one of the few travel payment processing companies that can directly integrate with both TRAMS and SABRE. You can perform your bookings like you always have but have the payment flow the way you need it to. We also integrate with many booking engines and shopping carts allowing you many options that are not available by host agencies.
NTC ePay is simple, secure and sets up in just minutes. It’s a web application, so you can use it on any device you already own: your desktop, laptop, tablet or phone. It lets you add inventory items or use the quick send feature for simplified invoicing.
Our ePay product was designed from the ground up with your security in mind. Even though we encrypt data back and forth to the payment gateway, we also use the gateway to handle the cardholder’s input. NTC’s cutting-edge technology doesn’t store credit card data, nor does it transmit that data. What that means to you is that the liability is 100% on the bank and not you – the merchant – as is typically the case. The application is written and hosted on our own servers, so you can set up and be in the ecommerce business within minutes.
By the way, there are also many customizations available to you with NTC ePay which can be set up very easily by your users. Inquire with your specific process and we will meet your specific needs in the travel payment scope.
Now when you run a social media campaign you can leverage our NTC ePay technology to help you increase sales. Use our ePay links to post vacation packages or special sales and have customers pay by two clicks.
Next week we will share the third reason in this series why National Transaction Corporation is the preferred choice for travel agents like you.
Remember, when you need a safe and technologically advanced gateway to manage all your travel agency payments, look no further than NTC.
Feel free to call us now at 888-996-2273, if you are ready to start using NTC ePay today.
Merchant aggregator is an entity that can run many transactions through a single merchant account, an opposite to the traditional account since you’re the sole owner.
Preferred for a smaller business because its not intended as a long term scalable solution to accepting payments.
For businesses that want to expand their processing needs, traditional merchant account will outgrow an aggregator, since the goal is for a business to grow, but it will always come to what’s best for individual business.
While you have the pros of quick application process and instant approval there are a lot of cons to check before getting an aggregator account.
CONS of an aggregator account:
CUSTOMER SERVICE – aggregators are hard to get hold of.
FEES – fixed fees .
FREQUENT HOLDS and DELAY OF FUNDS – aggregators hold funds 24-48 hours before depositing, while longer holds occur 30 days.
LOWER LIMITS – processing limits lower, annual limit of $100k.
PROS of a Traditional Account:
CUSTOMER SERVICE – 24/7 technical support.
FUNDS – next day funding, no frequent account holds.
FEES – tailored to your business needs.
LIMITS – varies by financial strength and business
For more information in setting up an account with NTC give us a call at 888-996-2273 or go to www.nationaltransaction.com
National Transaction offer valuable features and benefits. If you want to improve your business’s productivity, you should look for this features that you need from your merchant account provider.
Advanced Security Options – did you know that 6 out of 10 small businesses close within six months of a card data breach? Point-of-Sale devices should have appropriate security measures, particularly EMV, encryption and tokenization. With National Transaction we have Safe-T for Small and Medium Businesses and Safe-T for Large Businesses. Top-tier security is important on all your business’s data especially customer information, consider adding additional authentication procedures. Merchant account providers bundle various security features to make the process of becoming secure.
Fast Payment Processing – having up-to-date technology is the first step because some customers might become annoyed by slow service and leave. The sooner you have the money processed by your merchant account provider, the bigger and stronger your business can become. NTC is adept at administering payments quickly and efficiently. We can provide regular funding or next day funding.
Feature Flexibility – Look for a merchant provider that appropriately addresses your payment concerns. Obtaining the features you need from your merchant services provider is very important.
Mobile Payment Processing – NTC offer Virtual Merchant/Converge Mobile that gives you the ability to accept payments using your smartphone or tablet anywhere you go. The app works with most Apple and Android mobile devices. You can accept key-entered transactions or swipe cards using an encryption reader. You can now take chip card payments using Ingenico iCMP PIN Pad. Merchants who aren’t mobile payment capable do demonstrate unwillingness to progress with payment technology and might lose customers eventually.
Reliable Customer Support – NTC is available 24/7 answering the phone by humans and not automated systems. You got support with your hardware, answer questions and guide you to better understand the process. Customer support is perhaps the most important feature of any business partnership you make. You don’t want to choose the wrong provider.
Up-to-Date Tech – futuristic features, like mobile payment abilities, EMV/NFC, contactless payments are worth investing. Modern consumers are generally more familiar with up-to-date payment systems. Seeing a merchant service provider offer a swipe-only terminal should be a red flag, because the recent regulations require merchants to have EMV to provide better data security.
Always ask for the card security codes:
CVV2 for Visa
CVC2 for MasterCard
CID for Discover and American Express.
Always use the Address Verification Service (AVS) and only process sales after receiving a positive AVS response.
Avoid using voice authorizations, unless absolutely necessary.
Billing descriptor must set up properly and shows your phone number. Customer can contact you directly if there is an issue,
Consider using the associations’ 3-D secure services:
Verified By Visa
SecureCode by MasterCard
A 3-D transaction confirmation proves card ownership and protects you from certain types of chargeback. An additional layer of security for online credit and debit card transactions.
Inform your customers by email when a refund has been issued or a membership service cancelled. Notify them of the date the refund was processed and provide a reference number.
Make available customer support phone number and email address on your website so that customers can contact you directly. You need to meet this requirement before opening a merchant account.
Make it easy for your customers to discontinue a recurring plan, membership or subscription. Have a no-questions-asked policy.
Notify your customers by email of each transaction and indicate that their cards will be charged.
Obtain a confirmation of delivery for each shipment.
Process refunds as quickly as possible.
Secure an authorization approval for every transaction.
Secure customers’ written or electronic signatures, for recurring payments or monthly fees. Giving you express permission to charge their cards on a regular basis.
Terms and conditions must be clearly stated on your website. Customers must acknowledge acceptance by clicking on an Agree or a similar affirmative button.
Transaction amount must never exceed the authorized amount.
You are required to reauthorize the transaction before settling it if an authorization approval is more than seven days old.
To be responsive to the needs of our merchants and to meet that needs NTC offers next day funding. This is a value added service for customers and businesses that need to have their funds available quickly.
With more than 15 years of experience, National Transaction offers a variety of electronic payment services and technology for businesses.
Our services include:
Currency Conversion, credit, and debit card processing, e-commerce and gateways, electronic checks, gift and loyalty card programs, mobile processing, cash advances and loans/funding program. We also have NTC e-Pay and MediPaid.
NTC e-Pay – is an Electronic Invoicing that made simple with NTC e-Pay! Free Setup, Nothing To Integrate, Secure, and Fast. Invoice customers Electronically with NTC e-Pay. Our e-Pay Platform can help Travel Merchants bring new customers and encourage repeat business.
Our Virtual Merchant Gateway – accept payments your way! Online, In-Store and On the Go. A payment platform that flexes with your business.
NTC Business Loans – Fast, Affordable, and Simple Application Process.
MediPaid – a medical health insurance claims payment. Delivering paperless, next-day deposits for Health Insurance Payments.
NTC provides services to thousands of customers. NTC maintains a one on one relationships with all its merchants providing them with 24/7 customer service and technical support!
To know more about our product and services give us a call at 888-9962273
Merchant Cash Advance– A lump-sum payment to a business in exchange for an agreed-upon percentage of future credit card and/or debit card sales. The term is now commonly used to describe a variety of small business financing options characterized by short payment terms (generally under 24 months) and small regular payments (typically paid each business day) as opposed to the larger monthly payments and longer payment terms associated with traditional bank loans.
Merchant Cash Advance companies, provide funds to businesses in exchange for a percentage of the businesses daily credit card income, directly from the processor that clears and settles the credit card payment. A company’s remittances are drawn from customers’ debit-and credit-card purchases on a daily basis until the obligation has been met. Most providers form partnerships with payment processors and then take a fixed variable percentage of a merchant’s future credit card sales.
The Term Merchant Cash Advance– may be used to describe purchases of future credit card sales receivables, revenue and receivables factoring or short-term business loans.
This structure has some advantage over the structure of a conventional loan. Most importantly, payments to the merchant cash advance company fluctuate directly with the merchant’s sales volumes, giving the merchant greater flexibility with which to manage their cash flow, particularly during a slow season. Advances are processed quicker than a typical type loan, giving borrowers quicker access to capital. Also, because MCA providers like typically give more weight to the underlying performance of a business who may not qualify for a conventional loan.
Merchant Cash Advances are often used by businesses that do not qualify for regular bank loans, and are generally more expensive than bank loans. Competition and innovation led to downward pressure on rates and terms are now more closely correlated with an applicant’s FICO score.
There are generally three different repayment methods:
Split withholding– when the credit card processing company automatically splits the credit card sales between the business and the finance company per the agreed portion. The most common preferred method of collecting funds for both the clients and finance companies since it is seamless.
Lock box or trust bank account withholding– all of the business’s credit card sales are deposited into bank account controlled by the finance company and then the agreed upon portion is forwarded onto the business via ACH, EFT or wire. The least preferred method since it results in a one-day delay in the business receiving the proceeds of their credit card sales.
ACH withholding– when structured as a sale, the finance company receives the credit card processing information and deducts its portion directly from the business’s checking account via ACH. When structured as a loan, the finance company debits a fixed amount daily regardless of business sales.
