CEO Insights: SME Retailers Being Neglected When It Comes To Next-Gen Payment

In today’s world of retail dominated by the Amazon’s of the world, SMEs need to leverage every resource they can to survive. By leveraging the latest retail, payment, and omni-channel technologies, SMEs can actually compete quite well. Unfortunately, we’ve seen that this market is being neglected by payment institutions, who haven’t made an effort to supply small companies the same payment solutions available to their larger counterparts.

One of the most common complaints we hear is that, as a retailer is endeavouring to adopt an omni-channel model, the payment solutions available are disparate and lack integration between one another. Indeed, in many cases it’s necessary for small retailers to manage payment technologies in-store, for their e-commerce platform, and for their accounting platform. Not only does this create unnecessary complexity and require additional vendor management, the fact that the payment solutions don’t communicate with one another means true omni-channel gains cannot be realized.

More importantly, according to research from Barclaycard, nearly one in four small retailers have lost customers due to a lack of popular payment options. This number increases to two thirds when modern technology such as contactless, online payments, mobile, and wearable devices are taken into account.

This loss of customers adds up to real money. In fact, the research also estimates that SMEs are missing out on a £1.6 billion opportunity due to shortcomings in their payment technology --specifically, a lack of next-gen payments technology such as one-click ordering and conversational transactions.

To address the unique needs of this underserved market, Creditcall and Credorax, one of the first fintech companies to evolve into a licensed European merchant acquiring bank, have partnered to offer an integrated omni-channel payment platform for the European SME market. The holistic solution provides online, mobile, in-store, and unattended payments acceptance to retailers. Additionally, the combined expertise of the two companies means that ISVs, ISOs, and payment facilitators targeting the European market can expect a rapid certification service.

Creditcall’s portion of the partnership provides fast and easy deployment through its portfolio of SDKs and APIs. This means it’s possible for multiple payment devices to be supported within days on multiple channels across Europe. Credorax’s digital onboarding and quick MID setups fast tracks the process significantly. The new offering delivers an integrated payment gateway, a broad choice in payment devices, credit card processing, and state-of-the-art reporting for seamless and automated back-end reconciliation.

In the end, the solution reduces the time to market for merchants, cutting down on the delays caused by the EMV certification process, payment gateway integrations, and acquiring setups.

Don’t let your SME customers suffer payment solutions that don’t allow them to adequately compete with the giants in their industry. Integrated omni-channel payment solutions are available today to give them the competitive advantage they need. It’s up to you to deliver that solution to them.

To find out more, visit Creditcall booth B5 and Credorax booth #B5 during Money 20/20 Europe in Copenhagen, on 26-28 June 2017.

Insights from Lars Pedersen, Creditcall CEO