One of the characteristics of the digital economy is the surge of acquirers and acceptance solutions now available to smaller businesses.
Could acquirers be doing more
Not that many years ago, a start-up business had little choice but to go to a well-established acquirer, choose from a narrow menu of services, get to grips a complex pricing structure, and work their way go through an arduous and time-consuming application process.
Today, it’s very different.
A Google search will yield hundreds of options. There are now countless ways of accepting either face-to-face or e-commerce payments.
Online application processes are quick and easy. Pricing is crystal clear. Decisions are instantaneous. And, often, a start-up business can start accepting digital payments the very same day.
It’s a boon for any start-up business. But as start-up businesses begin to scale up, and their needs become more complex, is their payment provider equipped to support them?
This is a question being posed by Vienna-based digital payment specialist DIMOCO Payments.
And the company has begun using the phrase “scale-up syndrome” to describe the moment when a rapidly growing business hits a problem with its payment setup and can’t find an easy way to solve it.
That problem could be an unexplained error code. It could be high levels of cart abandonment. It could be a sudden surge in chargebacks.
It could even be that, inadvertently, they’ve crossed some sort of risk parameter, and their acquirer unilaterally suspends their account.
A small business rarely has the in-house payment expertise to diagnose the underlying issues.
Lean, low-cost, online payment specialists aren’t typically set up to have a consultative discussion with a scale-up business about its evolving payment needs.
And volume acquirers tend not to be interested in providing personalised customer service to a relative minnow with low volumes.
The issue can be exacerbated if the scale-up business works in what’s deemed to be a riskier sector with more complex payment needs.
And this has long been the sweet spot for DIMOCO Payments, which is known for servicing niches like iGaming.
As the company’s Head of Sales for Cards and Alternative Payment Methods Bernd Pichler puts it: “This heritage has given us an unusual depth of payment experience. And it means we have always understood problematic payments, we have always taken a consultative approach with our customers, and we have always looked to design a bespoke payment setup that will work for them.”
On its website, DIMOCO Payments even provides a step-by-step case study of how its team provided error code analysis to one scale-up business, liberating a 6 to 8% increase in conversion rates.
Based on its experience of applying the same consultative approach across more sectors, DIMOCO Payments believes there is a growing yet under-appreciated gap in today’s acquiring market.
It’s an interesting analysis – and, in today’s crowded acquiring market, it perhaps signals an opportunity for other payment service providers to differentiate their offer and, at the same time, provide real value to rapidly growing businesses and help them to solve their scale-up syndrome.
The post Could acquirers be doing more to help start-ups to scale up? appeared first on Payments Cards & Mobile.