The e-commerce payment system has been the reason behind every online shop’s success. It facilitates the acceptance of any electronic payment for all online transactions. Since the convergence of mobile devices, cloud computing, and Internet of Things (IoT), a lot of radical innovation has emerged to offer better, easier, and faster formulation of the system. The goal, after all, is to make transactions easier for the customer. However, to achieve this, you must go the hard way.
A lot of startup businesses think that processing for e-commerce billing is easy, so they usually leave and worry about it after they’re done with everything else. What they fail to understand is that the process can be long and difficult.
How to Process for an E-Commerce Billing
Starting Your Merchant Account
Before anything else, you must be able to get a merchant account that will allow your business to accept credit or debit payments.
There are two ways you can do this: (1) Set an agreement with a reliable bank that has processing access to MasterCard and Visa or (2) Set an agreement with an authorized agent of a reliable bank like member service provider or independent sales organizations. The agreement will state that your business agrees to fulfill all operating regulations set by the credit card brands.
Here’s a guide on how you can do it:
Step 1: Determine the credit card payment that will work with the business you’re setting. What types of credit card brands are you willing to accept? How do you want to accept it? How much sales volume do you allow through credit cards?
Step 2: Compare different merchant account providers. Since not all merchant accounts offer equal features, you must evaluate each of them carefully so you can get a holistic view of what they can offer and whether their price fits that offer.
Step 3: Wait for approval. Here is where it becomes time-consuming. Banks will have to make a comprehensive review of your application process before it can get approved. After all, they will be taking a risk if they enter into an agreement with you. In order to pass, you must be able to provide a lot of information about your finances and business model. The process can be excruciatingly long.
Step 4: Set up a merchant account. Once your application is approved, you can now proceed to getting other requirements.
Arranging Your Own Payment Gateway
If you think the process ends with setting up a merchant account, then you’re totally wrong. You also have to arrange your payment gateway, which will create the actual communication path between the credit card provider and your website so that transactions are authorized and credited right away. To avail one, you need to have a business bank account, business plan, a website with complete terms and conditions, a management account, and profit & loss projections.
There are several companies that offer such services, and you have to evaluate each of them. To do so, you must answer the following questions:
- When you plan to start accepting payments?
- How much are you willing to spend?
- How soon do you want to receive funds from your sales?
- Would you like to offer international payments?
- How secure is your chosen payment gateway?
- What level of support does it offer?
- What types of cards can the payment gateway accept?
- Does it offer recurring payments automatically?
- Does it offer hosted payments?
- Can it be used with existing integrations?
- Does it come with shopping cart software?
Installing relevant software
If you think the process ends there, you have it wrong again. You still have to install a software program that will handle all the credit card transaction. Of course, setting up a system is a complicated process. If you have a limited idea how to do it, you might end up seeking help from third-party servers, thus adding to your cost.
Luckily, there are companies that offer a robust and easy-to-use system that accepts payments online. One of these is Hybris.
What Hybris Has to Offer
Hybris is a software company specializing in digital commerce that started in 1997. It aims to provide solutions to all e-commerce’s needs, including its billing system.
The goal of every business is to gain more revenue, and this can only be achieved when you have offered quality service. Hybris knows this well. So, it crafted a billing solution that has helped in innovating business models by monetizing subscriptions and other usage-based services in real time, sharing revenues directly through a business network, handling high-volume revenue management processes, and delivering better customer service. To put it simply, it allows you to launch a customer-centric subscription in the fastest possible manner.
So you can understand it better, examine its full capabilities.
Monetizes Subscriptions and Services in Real-time
The digital industry is extremely competitive, especially since all of them have access to each of them, thus making it easier to be up-to-date with the latest pricing and business model trends. However, trends come and go in a matter of days. That’s why Hybris billing constantly keeps up with what’s new and launch customer-centric and agile business models that’ll set you apart from your competition.
Hybris does not only monetize subscriptions and revenue sharing models with great flexibility, but it also works on expanding your business by continually broadening your offers and delivering innovative products and services. It explores all touch points including change order processes and order distribution to make sure that everything is going smoothly.
How can you use this to your advantage?
- Design subscriptions, revenue-sharing, and usage-based pricing models quickly and in real-time so you can cater to high-volume orders.
- Create what-if scenarios based on the customer data you have so you can predict the possible effects of you newly launched pricing models.
- Launch targeted offers so you can create loyal customers and increase revenue.
Manage Billing and Revenue Effectively
If you want your business to grow, you must aim for a platform that can provide a reliable and automated system that manages the cash processes. Hybrid allows you to get complete access to all customer records and view the consolidated invoices so you can evaluate cash flow and accelerate collections process.
How can you use this to your advantage?
- Send a single bill across different business lines, so you can decrease bill presentment costs, increase mailing savings, and organize billing-related customer inquiries.
- Automate payment handling of all channels so you can reduce revenue leakage.
- Run an efficient collection strategy so you can lower you Days of Outstanding (DOS).
- Allow services agents to prompt you and give expert service so that you can increase customer satisfaction.
- Evaluate customer payment behavior by using the new picture of credit risks, so you can further refine your cash collection.
- Provide flexible credit terms and let them choose their preferred local payment method so you can improve conversion rate.
Simplifies Usage Data Consolidation in All Systems
Managing cash flow is a great challenge without a seamless flow of data across systems from the serving network to the downstream system. With Hybris, you are given the advantage of simplifying the consolidation of the usage data and controlling the services in real-time. Moreover, the data are handled carefully so that nothing is lost, misplaced, corrupted, and rejected by the receiving system.
How can you use this to your advantage?
- Control data in real-time so you can manage fraud, settle arguments between partners, and handle billing more effectively.
- Handle consolidated usage data carefully so you can minimize complications.
- Take advantage of the flawless communication among systems so that you can provide better customer experience.
Why Hybris Billing System Stands Out
Hybris billing system is built under an innovative business model with the main goal of increasing revenue. What sets it apart from other billing solutions is that it exploits the fast-moving market opportunities and quickly adapts the pricing and revenue-sharing models according to the trend. Hence, what you get is an efficient billing and revenue management solution.
Easy to use, Quick to process You need not learn about codes to create and simulate your preferred subscription pricing, usage pricing, bundle and special offers as you can do them by using the configuration. Thus, the processing is faster, too.
Promote transparency, Get loyalty Hybris encourages transparency and provides customers with summaries and details of their bill. This is done not only to ensure that there will be prompt payment, but it also reduces the number of inquiries about their bills. What’s more is that customers are likely to appreciate this and take this as a sign or reliability and trustworthiness.
Increase efficiency, Reduce cost You can access all customer records, evaluate them, and remove all inefficiencies you’ve found in the collected billed revenues. You can also optimize rating, billing, usage management, invoicing, revenue management, and payment reconciliation, so you can accelerate cash flow, improve customer service, and reduce the cost of ownership.
Get a Leverage, Scale Up With Hybris, you can build a platform that includes third-party apps, content, services besides your own. You can easily increase revenue this way and scale from being a small e-commerce company to a multi-million dollar business together with your partners and resellers.
While e-commerce billing can be a challenge if taken alone, you can easily conquer it with the help of Hybris.