The Software and Payments Divide is Shrinking

It wasn’t all that long ago that software and any payments components were completely separate when it came to the final solution. Of course, as time passed and new innovations and capabilities were brought to market, it began making sense for payments and software to have some level of interoperability. Today, with trends such as omnichannel, mobile payments, EMV, Contactless, NFC-based loyalty programs, and a focus on improving the customer experience, payments play a critical role in the software solution. Indeed, the line where software ends and payments begin has blurred.

ISVs have partnered with payment companies for the above capabilities in the hopes that they can save time, money, and avoid a steep learning curve. Unfortunately, in many cases, the end result is often an integration that doesn’t provide a very good customer experience. For example, after onboarding a customer with your software, they often must then create a merchant account with the payment partner before they can begin accepting electronic payments.

There are a few potential solutions if you find yourself in this situation:

• Stripe integration — Stripe has made a name for itself by making software integrations and the onboarding of new merchants easy. Unfortunately, the glaring downside is that as an ISV you are missing a significant recurring revenue stream that Stripe is keeping for itself. Additionally, Stripe lacks many features today's merchants find appealing.

• Partner with a Payment Facilitator (pay-fac) technology provider — Why build the Pay-Fac technology the hard way when you can partner with a company, like NMI, that provides a platform with all the features a pay-fac needs. With our FACe technology, NMI carries the burden of building and maintaining a cutting-edge payments platform. All it takes is a simple integration after you register as a pay-fac. From there, your customers can get up and running in minutes and begin accepting payments.

With more and more customers choosing to make purchases electronically, your payments solution shouldn’t be the weak link in your software. With high expectations from merchants and consumers, it’s imperative that the payments component of your software provides powerful features and facilitates a positive experience. With so much riding on the payments piece, it makes sense to partner with a company like NMI who has a proven track record of delivering cutting-edge payments solutions and being the trusted partner of so many ISVs like you.