Electronic Retailer - June 2012 - 35

Payments intelligence empowers you to acquire, understand and better retain your customers, allowing you to compete with top-line revenue generating and retaining solutions. Payments intelligence forces you to think differently about the information you are capturing from the payments you process. But, believe it or not, you can begin to realize payments intelligence today. Let’s walk through some actionable solutions to help you realize the power of payments intelligence.

Payments Intelligence Realized
The following are three real-world examples of how payments intelligence can work for your bottom line. Example 1: Maximixing Sales Your customer signs up for installment billing, but he does so using a prepaid card. Because you use a prepaid card filtering service you know, at the time of order, that this card is prepaid and there are insufficient funds to pay for the entire cost. With this intelligence available at the time of order, you can prompt your customer to complete the sale with a second form of payment, effectively splitting the tender and enabling your customer to make the purchase. Example 2: Retaining Customers You’re a membership or subscription company that relies on recurring billing for revenue. But, until payments are submitted and authorizations are returned, you have no insight into cards that have expired or changed. Typically, you rely on call center staff to reach out and retrieve updated card information from your customers. This is an expensive endeavor that often leads to customer attrition and lost revenue. But, by utilizing payments intelligence and Account Updater services you can eliminate this costly approach, realize newfound revenue and better retain customers. Example 3: Preventing Chargebacks Your business is looking to reduce the number of chargebacks you face. By using card indicators, such as prepaid, you can more easily identify highrisk transactions. Proactively declining these transactions allows you to more effectively reduce your chargeback rates. Further, by looking at historical chargeback data you can more intelligently predict, on a percentage basis, what chargebacks you have a better chance of winning. This affords you the opportunity to more strategically determine which chargebacks you take into representment, saving you time and money.

Maximize Sales at the Time of Order
In the card-not-present environment and particularly for direct response merchants, your window for a sale is often short. It is important you have all the information necessary to close a sale at the time of order. If something goes awry during the checkout process, you are likely left with a lost sale and a lost customer. Utilizing pieces of payments intelligence will allow you to maximize sales, improve your overall customer experience and better retain customers. • Prepaid Card Usage: Prepaid card use, as reported recently by Bloomberg, rose by about 18 percent in 2011. Are you prepared to process more prepaid cards, knowing very well prepaid card authorizations bring more risk and are more likely to be declined for insufficient funds? What if you had more visibility into your customer’s payment type? Knowing that a card is prepaid, along with its remaining balance, creates several new opportunities for you to more profitably process prepaid payments. This intelligence can be applied several ways to help you increase revenue and lower the costs of payment acceptance all while improving the customer experience. • Partial Payment Authorizations: Transaction declines often result because of insufficient funds on the customer’s part. This can lead to unnecessary card retries and potentially higher expenses for you. But, realizing payments intelligence allows you the opportunity to reduce the

number of insufficient funds declines and reduce expenses. Solutions like partial payment authorizations, allow you to bring point-of-sale opportunities to the cardnot-present environment. Capturing the amount of available funds, at the time of order, gives you the opportunity to communicate to your customers before they leave the checkout page and ask for an additional source of payment. Not only does this reduce lost sales, but it increases your likelihood of closing the sale. Further, when a customer payment is declined and a retry is made, you’re subject to a fee applied by the card brand as well as those fees applied by your processor. When multiple declined attempts occur, fees quickly add up. By offering a customer the opportunity to use an additional form of payment after the first failed authorization, you not only save a sale but reduce expenses.

Better Retain Customers
Installment and recurring billing models are an attractive offer to consumers. They make it easier for consumers to purchase products and make payments. But, if you accept payments on installment and recurring cycles you may very well know the challenges associated with these billing models. Cards on file often lead to declined authorizations requiring you to contact your customers to remit payment. By accessing your trove of payment data you can more intelligently try to recapture these declined sales. • Recovery Solutions: Customer credit card changes happen often – expiration dates and card upgrades, among other reasons, can create customer service and payment disruptions. These card changes cause declined authorizations compromising your ability to retain revenue and 35

June 2012 | electronicRETAILER

Electronic Retailer - June 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Electronic Retailer - June 2012