There’s a clear gap in the acquiring market reckons Vienna-based DIMOCO Payments.
For small and micro-businesses with simple payment needs, there are lots of options available.
The role acquirers play in achieving growth
For larger enterprises with complex needs, there are also plenty of choices.
But, for many growing businesses, finding the right acquirer can be a real challenge – especially when their existing payment setup is causing headaches.
Payments Cards & Mobile recently caught up with DIMOCO’s Head of Sales for Cards and Alternative Payment Methods Bernd Pichler to find out more.
DIMOCO uses the phrase ‘scale-up syndrome’. What do you mean by that?
Scale-up syndrome is when a 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.
Can you imagine being a smaller business signed up with a volume acquirer or payment service provider, and trying to solve that sort of a problem? It’s a nightmare.
Can you give us any specific examples?
OK, let me give you an example of a big, obvious, business-critical problem, like a suspended merchant account. You often hear of this type of horror story.
Unbeknown to them, a merchant inadvertently crossed an acquirer’s risk parameter.
Suddenly, and without warning, the acquirer pulls the plug. Everything grinds to a halt.
The business needs an immediate resolution, so they pick up the telephone. Eventually they get through, but customer support is outsourced to an offshore call centre.
The customer service representative has little understanding of the issue, they have no understanding of the sector, and they have no empathy with a business owner who is feeling increasingly exasperated.
It’s an extreme case. But it does happen.
As the owner of a rapidly growing company, you need an attentive acquirer – one who understands your business, advises can forewarn you if you’re ever in danger of inadvertently triggering a risk control, and can work with you to quickly resolve any issues that do occur.
That’s an example of a big, business-critical problem. How about the more routine issues?
In many ways, for a scale-up company, the more routine issues are worse – much worse – because they represent a constant and sometimes unnoticed drag on everyday business performance.
The unexplained error codes for example. Or the higher-than-normal instances of cart abandonment.
Every time this happens, you lose a sale, and you frustrate a customer. For a busy business, it can happen hundreds of times a week.
Yet, with no inhouse payments expertise, you maybe don’t realise the prevalence of the problem. You cannot diagnose it for yourself.
And, due to the size of your business, you can never hope to receive that type of support or insight from a volume acquirer or payment service provider.
Another issue you see is that many scale-up businesses don’t appreciate the complexity of the payment processing ecosystem, and the tangled web of providers that work within it.
When you look in detail at their payment set up, you realise they are working with a referring partner, who is connected to an independent sales organisation, who is connected to some type of a gateway, who is connected to an acquirer.
Each of these layers may be adding unnecessary complexity and cost. So, it is probably more sensible to cut out the middlemen and work directly with an acquirer who can connect them to multiple payment methods.
How does the DIMOCO service differ? And how are you equipped to deliver a more attentive service than volume providers?
DIMOCO is unusual because our heritage is in working with merchant sectors that many acquirers are cautious of. This 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.
With this background and this model, we are also ideally equipped to take our expertise and our approach more widely and serve rapidly growing, scale up businesses.
So, every customer has a dedicated account manager. It’s their job to understand the merchant, the merchant’s sector, and the payment issues they face.
It’s also their job to run regular health checks and look for opportunities to turn payments not just into revenue, but also into opportunity.
Can you give an example of how, specifically DIMOCO can work with a scale up business to improve payment performance – and therefore business performance?
Sure. A customer business in the eCommerce sector was experiencing suboptimal conversion rates, and we worked with them to find solutions.
The key strategy was to delve deep into the world of error codes, which can play a pivotal role in transaction failures.
First, we conducted a comprehensive analysis of error codes generated during transactions, giving us valuable insights into the specific issues causing unsuccessful transactions.
Next, we categorized error codes into three main groups, namely 3DS errors, technical errors, and issuer errors, helping us clarify the issues and prioritise remedies.
For the 3DS errors and technical glitches, the team focused on enhancing the merchant-side experience, including system improvements and process optimisations.
For the issuer errors, the focus was on customer communications, with tailored error messages and visual communications to explain what had gone wrong.
By implementing this comprehensive strategy, the business successfully increased its conversion rates by an impressive 6 to 8%.
Customers experienced a smoother, more transparent payment process, and the business achieved its growth objectives.
In the world of digital commerce, it’s often assumed that big is beautiful.
In fact, we believe that, instead of working with one of the payment processing giants, many scale up businesses would be better off working with a smaller, more agile business like DIMOCO – which need not be any more expensive, brings actionable expertise, and puts an emphasis on customer service.
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