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Education

How to make the leap Updating archaic onboarding

In the fundamental category, it is vi-
to next-gen acquiring tal that those in the value chain make
dramatic strides to optimize business
By Peter Spee operations because they are being
overtaken by new entrants with new
AEVI approaches to the business.

o company can rest easy in any industry as digitization upends The card-present onboarding process
traditional business strategies. That's certainly true for those in that most merchants encounter is
the payments acquisition value chain, where technology advance- fairly archaic. It may take days, even
N ments are enabling novel solutions to overtake traditional sales weeks, from the time they sign up for
propositions and distribution channels. payment acceptance services until
they day they actually have a pay-
Industry players must invest to stay ahead of the curve, but no one wants to ment device up and running.
make the wrong gamble. So, where should payments companies invest to make
the leap to next-gen acquiring? While a certain amount of risk is always present Think of how Amazon has disrupted
in the payments business, there is one certainty in this era: data is central to the retail chain, from large national
success. brands to Main Street bookstores, and
the problem with this picture should
With that in mind, acquirers, processors and ISOs should focus on two key be obvious. A merchant should be
objectives, one fundamental and one aspirational, as they make their investment able to go to a website and choose a
decisions. These are, respectively, updating archaic onboarding technology payment solution, get fast delivery,
and procedures, and monetizing data. and enjoy easy and speedy onboard-
ing.

For most industry players, websites
offer little more than an online bro-
chure and a form to provide contact
information so a salesperson can fol-
low up on a merchant's inquiry. There
are few opportunities to configure
and provision a payment solution
quickly and online. Meanwhile, a
host of technology solution providers
are more than willing to sell over the
Internet and drop-ship hardware that
can be installed with relative ease.
Simplify, streamline, speed up

To the merchant, our industry looks
like a confusing mish mash of inter-
locking providers. Are they contract-
ing with the acquirer or the ISO?
Who needs to initiate services, such
as key loading. It is an overly complex
process that traditionally involves
lots of faxed paperwork and potential
for human-error and finger-pointing.
Meanwhile, the merchant has to wait
until everything gets resolved.

If Amazon can provide free, same-
day service to some of its Prime cus-
tomers, why in the world can't our
industry provide same-day onboard-
ing? Now that we can provide pay-
ment services and suites of related

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