After the thrill is gone: Your business data should be yours for the taking

Last thing I remember,
I was running for the door.
I had to find the passage back
To the place I was before.
“Relax,” said the nightman,
“We are programmed to receive.
You can check out any time you like,
But you can never leave!”
— The Eagles, “Hotel California”

In a recent blog post, Andrew Wicklander from Tula Software raised the issue of credit card portability. If you are unfamiliar with this concept, it simply means that business owners have the right, at a reasonable cost, to safely and securely migrate their clients’ credit cards from one merchant processor to another. Without card portability, personal-services businesses that have recurring billing relationships with their clients can quickly discover that they have inadvertently checked into the Hotel California.

FrontDesk strongly supports card portability — and transparency, more broadly. Like Andrew, I’ve been frustrated by some of the business practices we’ve seen from other providers of client management software, ranging from companies charging exorbitant fees for porting cards to others who flat-out refuse to release credit card data at all. We are fed up with the lack of transparency about data ownership and fees across our industry.

At FrontDesk we made the decision to take the concept of card portability a step further and enable choice when it comes to picking a merchant processing partner. We have established connections with over 500 merchant processors and work hard to ensure that our clients are partnering with a merchant processor of their choice (not ours).

We also have strong convictions about the broader issues of data ownership, transparency, and choice:

• We consider your data yours. We make your critical data exportable, including names, email, phone, address, and all other custom field data in a single report. This data is available to you whenever you want it, even if you choose to end your relationship with us. As long as we can ensure that credit card info is moved securely from our PCI-compliant provider to another, we will assist with safely and securely porting your clients’ card information.
• We’re transparent about costs. FrontDesk has worked with all of our processing partners to ensure that they are not profiting from porting cards. The reality is that there are indeed costs involved with securely handling credit card data. Our commitment is that merchant processors partnering with Front Desk will not take advantage of our clients’ need for secure data handling but provide that service at a reasonable cost.

Like the businesses using FrontDesk, our success depends on long-lasting relationships with our customers. At FrontDesk we have come up with a very simple guiding principle to help ensure that we are building long-term relationships. We strive to treat our customers the way our clients treat theirs — with respect, dependability, humility, and transparency.