Splitting up Your Merchant Payments

Split Funding

If your clients need split funding or adaptive payment capabilities, you need to choose which payment gateway you offer them very carefully. Split payments can derail systems that seem to otherwise be robust. Fortunately, good choices are available that can handle whatever merchants throw at them, including split funding.

In the past, payment processing was simpler. Whatever payment option you offered your software clients was probably just fine. Sure, there was a need to divide payments among parties, but it was just the MSP, the ISO and the reseller, in most cases.

But that won’t cut it anymore. Merchants still need to be able to offer split payments/split funding for their payment service commissions, but there’s much more to the story today.

Endless Payment Orchestration Scenarios

So what options for managed payments do businesses need? Maybe merchants need to be able to add convenience fees to their payment transactions. This is necessary for companies that collect rent but charge a convenience fee for paying with a credit card. Many of yesterday’s payment management system choices simply couldn’t handle this, especially if that convenience fee needed to be further divided among several entities.

And then there’s the issue of taxes and reserves. Maybe a merchant needs to collect tax and then have the tax portion of the transaction put into a separate bank account. That’s a payment processing complexity that not all systems can handle. And the same goes for putting reserves or some other portion of the payment into a separate account or paying it out to a third party.

Speaking of third parties, some retailers — particularly online retailers — need flexible payments capabilities, including split funding to pay their vendors. Maybe they sell a variety of products from several different suppliers. Each time they get an order, the money from it needs to be divided up and sent to several suppliers — and this needs to be done automatically and without hassles. It sounds confusing to think about, but the logic to make this happen needs to be built into the Payment as a Service, or PaaS, software used by the merchant.

When Existing Split Payment Solutions Fall Short

We don’t mind giving credit where it’s due. PayPal was early on the scene with adaptive payment abilities. Merchants that want to take advantage of this capability must have a PayPal business account, an existing website and apply for permission. But once approved, social networking widget owners and mobile phone application providers, for example, can divide payments as allowed by PayPal adaptive payments technology.

Some businesses require greater flexibility or want to accept payments in ways that don’t fit within the existing split payment models, however. They often want PaaS software included with software they’re already buying anyway that can meet their needs without restrictions or added complications.

That’s where Zift comes in. With a goal of simplifying payments in every way possible, Zift brings all payments onto a centralized and fully loaded platform that developers can use to meet a wide variety of needs, including the need for split payment transactions. And Zift happens to come with excellent customer service that makes serving your clients easier than you could ever imagine.

Every payment matters, so why not integrate with a service that can provide the split transaction capabilities you need?

Zift = payments made simple