RetailEdge works with three credit card processors: Global Payments, Worldpay, and Card Connect (First Data/Fiserv).
We do this because we want to provide you with choice to get the best technology and rates, but we don’t want to spend all of our time programming to other processors. There is a lot more to Point of Sale than just credit card processing.
There are around 16 companies that are authorized to do credit card processing. These are the big players that you probably have already heard of (First Data, Global, Chase PaymentTech, etc.). So whichever company/bank you choose to do credit card processing with, they will be ultimately be using one of these 16 (called “backends”). Local banks will probably come to you and say that you should process with them because they are local. The processing is not local, as they are all using the same backends. Most of these people will just put what we call a “dumb” terminal on your counter and really provide no add-on service or features to their “offering”.
The next level up are the Gateways. That is who RetailEdge is talking to. These Gateways offer a way for our software to communicate with the backend processor and they also add additional features/services, that the backends don’t like gift cards, loyalty programs, different payment methods, recurring billing programs, etc. We have chosen to talk to these gateways, for a number of reasons, however, primarily because they provide:
1. An easy way for us to talk to the backend processors and allow RetailEdge to accept credit cards so that the checkout process is quick and seamless.
2. A level of service that the backend processors are not going to do. So if the backend processors make a change to the way that they do things or add new technology, they will protect us from this change or at least make it easier to incorporate these changes into RetailEdge.
So to sum up what we do with our integrations:
1. Give you flexibility to get the best rates.
We actually use one of our processors to process our credit card sales. Looking at the pages of fees and add-ons can be aggravating to say the least. There are systems out there that only talk to one processor. Intuit’s Quickbooks POS talks to Intuit Merchant Systems. Do you think you are going to be able to get the best rate when they talk to one processor? I have talked to people that think Square’s 2.75% rate is a good deal (News Flash: It’s not!).
2. Give you different features and integration with RetailEdge.
3. Improve security for our customers
Hopefully this helps you navigate credit card processing. If you have any questions please feel free to ask in the comments below. We will never sell or give away your email to 3rd parties, so comment in confidence.
We have been in this game for 25+ years, so we’ve acquired lots of information about how the process works that many companies don’t want you to know. Happy shopping!