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ReadersSpeak

Meeting the Stripe challenge chant isn't getting their own merchant account, payment
facilitators don't have to charge the monthly fees that are
I'm looking into competing directly with Stripe in some assessed at a MID level.
vertical niches. A few developers I've talked to rave about
their technology/API/ease of integration. The gateways Secondly, in addition to registering as a payment facili-
I've shown them were apparently not impressive: code tator Stripe built a technology platform that could deliv-
way out-of-date. er and support payment facilitator capabilities. Unlike
with traditional merchant service providers, payment
I was wondering if you had any insight into what all processors don't have an out-of-the-box technology so-
gateways are out there. Other than Auth.net and a few of lution for payment facilitators. Most payment gateways
the bigger names, it's hard to find any good info. Mainly are geared toward servicing traditional merchants with
looking for a solution with up-to-date, robust code, as well individual MIDs, with a narrow focus of switching
as Level II and III support. Any help you could give me transaction data to processors.
would be greatly appreciated.
Payment facilitators need more. They need to provide
Ryan King a sub-merchant boarding process. They are responsible
Guardian Payment Systems Inc. for generating and delivering sub-merchant processing
Ryan, statements. They need to generate daily funding in-
structions so their sub-merchants get paid. A payment
Thank you for getting in touch. We haven't compiled data facilitator is also responsible for delivering chargeback
comparing features of payment gateways. However, here notifications to their sub-merchants, and everything
is information Matt Hyde, Vice President of Marketing & else that an ISO traditionally does.
Partner Development at NMI, offered in response to your
request: NMI's Payments Enablement Technology Platform is
designed to support the technology needs of payment
The question you've asked is one we are hearing more facilitation. It's built on a multitiered hierarchical struc-
and more frequently. Increasingly, companies are ex- ture and is a white-label solution that is completely
ploring how they can offer their own Stripe-like solu- brandable. Our FACe (Facilitator Enablement) product
tion to their merchant customers. This solution has two has a plug-and-play solution for payment facilitators.
characteristics which are very appealing to merchants: The APIs for FACe are JSON and are developer friendly.
1. A frictionless application and onboarding experi- With this platform, payment facilitators can handle on-
ence. boarding, sub-merchant account creation and manage-
2. A much easier to understand, pay-as-you-go, flat ment, KYC services and reporting, and much more.
price to process payments.
If you decide to explore payment facilitation, many more
There are a couple reasons Stripe can deliver this: questions will arise, like:
• Which payment processors or sponsor banks are
First, they have registered as a payment facilitator with a underwriting payment facilitators?
sponsor bank. The main difference between a payment • Is my business a good fit for the payment facilitation
facilitator and a traditional merchant acquirer is with a model?
traditional merchant service provider the acquirer indi- • What will I be required to do in order to operate as
vidually underwrites and approves each merchant who a payment facilitator?
then receives their own merchant ID (MID). • Should I build my own technology or partner with a
technology provider?
With a payment facilitator, the sponsor bank under-
writes the payment facilitator as a master merchant with NMI has helped a number of businesses navigate the
all merchants boarded as sub-merchants underneath complexities around payment facilitation. Whether you
them. The payment facilitator is responsible for applica- plan to use our technology or not, we are happy to help
tion processing, boarding, risk monitoring, billing and you navigate the waters of this exciting and disruptive
reporting for all sub-merchants they sign up. The appli- approach to merchant acquiring.
cation process is significantly streamlined, merchants
are approved within a few minutes and set up with a Thank you, Matt, for your informative response.
sub-merchant ID off of the payment facilitator's master-
merchant ID. Ask us!

The net effect is that applying, getting approved and be- Would you like more information on a particular topic? Do
ing able to accept payments with a traditional merchant you have a pressing issue to bring to the payments com-
service provider can take 24 to 36 hours or more and the munity's attention? Tell us at greensheet@greensheet.com.
same process literally takes just minutes with a payment
facilitator. Because with the payment facilitator a mer-
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