The number of various payment channels has increased exponentially over the past few years, with consumers now having a variety of payment methods to choose from. The diversity of businesses on the market and advancements in technology have spawned new payment methods like mobile wallets, tokens, payment-enabled wearables and payments via text message.
These payment frameworks can be referred to as Payment Service Providers (PSPs), enabling online merchants to accept alternative payment solutions and mobile payments.
However, these technological advances also come with some novel challenges. These include:
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- Difficulty with international payments: With trade becoming increasingly globalised, merchants will often need to make cross-border, multi-currency transactions. Being a relatively new innovation, PSPs may not have the necessary infrastructure in place to provide efficient payments processing.
- Integration difficulties: Because alternative payment methods have specialised technology processes, they may be difficult to integrate with the tools already being used by merchants. On top of this, there is currently no global standard for mobile payments.
- Complexity: Alternative payment channels are complicated to manage, meaning merchants may struggle with visibility across all varied transaction paths. This can result in payment errors, delays and other issues that will negatively affect customer satisfaction.
PSPs can also fall victim to the complexity of their own innovation, so must think ahead by putting transaction monitoring and management solutions in place from the get-go. By utilising the latest technologies to improve their service offering, PSPs can stay ahead of the competition.
With the world of alternative payment channels becoming more competitive and globalised, it’s now more important than ever to have payments monitoring systems in place.
Merchants and PSPs alike need to have strategies to manage and troubleshoot payments for these alternative payment methods to be readily accepted by the market.
The number one feature of an effective payments monitoring system is real-time visibility.
Kate Daley is the Content Marketing Manager at IR, the leading provider of experience management solutions for critical IT ecosystems. She has an extensive marketing and content production background across various industries including IT, finance and education.
Tools that provide this visibility, as well as analytical and troubleshooting capabilities, allow merchants to:
- Optimise payment channels in a proactive, not reactive, manner
- Innovate and debug rapidly
- Improve the customer experience, no matter where customers are in the world
- Minimise business risks
- Increase profits transparently
Real-time tools and deep data visibility allow for alerts to be sent out before customers are affected by any imminent issues. This is especially important given that distrust of alternative payment methods exists among some customers, who will be further deterred by a negative experience due to a merchant’s lack of foresight.
Detailed analytics can also be applied to better understand transaction and performance flows, helping merchants make data-driven decisions and technological updates without any teething issues.
Related: Cryptocurrency and the IT Department: Would (or Should?) Your Org Ever Accept Alternative Payment?
Ultimately, it is worth investing in high quality experience management tools which help to simultaneously simplify complexity, improve user experience, provide transparency and increase profitability.
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