June 28, 2013 •Brian Watson
On the surface, online billing and payment might seem pretty simple: your customer makes a payment and a few days later the funds are sitting right there in your bank account.
Easy, right? Well, it’s actually a bit more complicated than that.
There’s a whole behind-the-scenes system at work, verifying and authorizing payments, handling funds settlement and posting, and collecting information so that it can be easily accessed and used by your business office team.
In fact there can be as many as five or six different parties involved in the payment value channel: you, your customer, their card network, the issuing bank that back the transaction, and your payment gateway, processor, and merchant acquiring bank.
And keeping track of who does what – not to mention who you’re paying and why – can quickly get complicated.
Curious about what exactly it is a merchant acquirer does, and why you need one to process payment? Or what distinguishes a payment gateway from a payment processor? Or how the payment value chain is structured and why it makes a difference on your bottom line?
Well, you’ve come to the right place. Click the "How Do Online Payments Get From Customers to Your Bank Account Infographic" below to learn all about the online payment value chain.
Ready to learn more about online billing and payment and how it can help you reduce billing costs, streamline billing practices, and – most importantly – collect faster? Schedule a time to talk to the EBPP experts at Elite today!