Key Insights
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In-housing your card present platform provides full ownership of payment data, enabling deeper customer insights that drive strategic decisions and enhance the overall customer experience.
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By managing your own payment system, you tailor security protocols to meet specific needs, minimizing the risk of data breaches and ensuring compliance with standards like PCI DSS.
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Internal payment processing reduces reliance on third-party providers, allowing for lower transaction fees and more negotiating power with banks, resulting in significant long-term savings.
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When it comes to payments, most businesses do the same thing: outsource. It’s easy, it’s familiar, but is it really the best move? When you outsource your card present platform, you’re handing off the most crucial part of your business: your payment data. But, the question is, why not take the reins yourself?
Understanding payment data
First, let's clarify what payment data actually is. Much more than numbers and transactions, payment data is a story. It’s a window into your customers’ behaviors and their preferences, and a valuable insight into how they interact with your brand. Then there’s payment card data, which are the specifics around a transaction that are often locked behind third-party systems when you outsource. These insights are critical, and in the right hands (your hands) they can transform how you operate. But only if you have full control.
Why it matters to in-house your card present platform
In-housing a card-present payment platform (effectively, ‘being your own payment processor’) is all about unlocking potential; it opens doors to:
- Owning your data + deeper customer insights (which gives you the ability to respond in real-time)
- Greater security
- A more cost-effective approach
For example, rather than waiting for a third-party payment processor to report on your customers’ spending habits, you have that information at your fingertips. You can spot trends before they happen, reducing costs by lowering transaction fees and enhancing security with features like tokenization and EMV technology. In short, you’re not reacting, you’re predicting. Now, let’s explore this in more detail…
The 3 major benefits of in-housing your card-present payment platform:
1. Owning your customer data and deeper customer insights
One of the biggest advantages of in-housing your card-present payment platform? The data is yours. Whether it's patterns in how often a customer buys or the times of day your sales peak, it’s yours to analyze and use as you see fit. The longer you outsource, the more you limit your ability to see the bigger picture.
The more touch points you control, the more you can leverage them. Having your own platform allows you to look at how customers engage across different services - are they using contactless payment for their morning coffee but preferring mobile wallets for larger purchases? Those insights are valuable because they help you make decisions about inventory, staffing, and even future product development.
Take Amazon, for example. Their approach to in-house payment systems allows them to constantly refine the shopping experience, such as “Customers who bought this also bought” suggestions, which enhance engagement and boost sales, leading to a customer retention rate that puts many other businesses to shame. When you hold the keys to your payment data, you can do the same, offering personalized experiences based on real-time behavior, not monthly reports.
2. Greater security
Outsourcing means handing off security to someone else, but in-house means that you control how secure the process is. You’re in charge of PCI DSS compliance and any other measures you want to take to safeguard transactions. That’s essential when data breaches cost companies an average of $4.45 million.
By keeping the system internal, you can tailor your security protocols to your exact needs, rather than relying on cookie-cutter solutions that may not address your specific vulnerabilities. And let’s face it, when it comes to protecting your customer data, you want security built for you, not for the masses.
3. A more cost-effective approach
When you handle payment processing internally, you avoid the fees that come with outsourcing to third-party providers, particularly the higher rates associated with card-not-present transactions. By processing payments in-house, you can negotiate better rates with banks and avoid the markups added by external processors.
Additionally, you have more flexibility to streamline operations, such as reducing overhead costs related to transaction fees or customizing the payment experience to fit your business model. Over time, these savings can be impressively substantial.
Aevi’s IPPO and how it can help you in-house your card-present payment platform
Here’s where Aevi’s in-person payment orchestration comes into play. Our IPPO platform simplifies transactions and gives you the flexibility to integrate and customize multiple payment services under one roof. It’s a unified platform that allows businesses to in-house their payment solutions while maintaining full control over data and ensuring a smooth customer experience.
Unlike rigid third-party systems, our platform lets you mold the platform to fit your needs. Whether you’re running a multi-location enterprise or a single retail store, IPPO lets you tailor every aspect of the payment process to enhance operational efficiency and improve customer satisfaction.
“We used to live in a world where we would find solutions for our merchants to process a payment at all costs and reselling a 3rd party was generally fit for purpose based on the current market needs because the needs for the end merchants were quite simple. Now, 45% of SMBs in the US are using some type of vertical software with the EU closely following the trend.
To remain competitive, working with a software company introduces an entirely different relationship between the merchant and the payment provider and bringing in an in-house card present platform enables payments companies to more effectively cater to the software platform by enabling a fully integrated front and back-office merchant experience. This would not be possible in the pure reseller world.”
Are you ready to discover how an in-house card present platform can give you the insights you need to stay ahead? Speak to one of our team today, and let’s talk it through.
