Whatever your product, service, or sector – taking payments is the core of your business. And whilst your customers don’t see any of the behind-the-scenes technicalities, they certainly notice when something’s not right. From delays and failed transactions to incompatible payment types – friction in the payments process can jeopardise both your cash flow and your customer relationships. That’s why choosing a payments solution which is quick, easy, and fully supported is vital to your success. And it’s why we believe that cloud-based bank integration beats electronic payment gateways every time.
Here are our top three reasons:
1. Rapid implementation and short contracts
Payment gateways are easy to get into but notoriously difficult to get out of. Vendor lock-in, brought about by prohibitive contract lengths and the perceived complexity of switching, is a real challenge for businesses looking to change their setup.
Cloud-based solutions are, by design, much more agile, straightforward, and responsive. At AccessPay, our average implementation time is just 2 – 4 weeks, from contract signed to first payment taken, and our record is just 6 days. When you need to move quickly to capitalise on market opportunity, or respond to an end-of-life announcement in your tech stack, time is quite literally money.
This is also the reason why we offer contracts as short as 12 months, because regular reviews are essential if you’re to maintain your operational agility.
Moving to AccessPay was one of the smoothest implementations we’ve ever experienced. All that was required from our end was sending the file – two weeks later we were moved over.
2. Low cost of entry and affordable scaling
Most payment gateways charge both by transaction and by month, meaning the costs will mount quickly, and scaling can be a daunting financial burden. The last thing you want to worry about is what your payments bill is going to look like if you close that big deal.
In AccessPay there are no limits to the number or value of transactions, nor any direct costs for processing payments. We charge a fixed annual subscription fee, which won’t increase mid-contract even if your transaction volume increases. As your business grows and you start taking more payments, a higher annual fee will be agreed with your account manager during your end-of-year review – it’ll never come as a mid-term surprise.
This is the fee structure across all services within the AccessPay platform – from payments and collections, like Direct Debits, to back-office operations, like Payroll.
We found that we were paying money for a platform just to send messages to the bank. After we’d built our finance system, we didn’t need that platform to hold the mandate any more or anything like that, we just needed a simple gateway to the bank. So we needed something new, but one that wouldn’t charge us per transaction either. We want to grow our business as much as we can, but we don’t want to just pump that money back into fees and charges.
3. Five-star rated customer service and short SLAs
When it comes to cash flow and continuity, there’s nothing worse than being unable to process a payment and waiting days – or even hours – for a response from your provider.
Automation helps, because there are fewer manual processes and therefore less chance for things to go wrong. But customer service is about more than just fixing the errors – we pride ourselves on building lasting, responsive, and trusted relationships with our clients. Our comprehensive support structure is made up of Account Managers, Customer Success Managers, a service desk, and a technical implementation team. It’s in our interest to make sure that the platform works for you, so that we can maintain a long-term partnership. This philosophy is why 97% of our clients stick with us when it it’s time to renew.
And whilst AccessPay is designed to be a ‘set-and-forget’ system, so that you can get on with the business of taking payments, we regularly meet with our clients to check in and make sure they’re getting what they need – tweaking the setup if they or we spot any potential improvements.
When it comes to those tweaks, or any changes required at any time, our SLAs are some of the quickest in the industry.
Throughout the project, AccessPay’s customer support was excellent. They provided expert guidance on SWIFT, helping us to understand what was needed to fully automate our treasury payments, and liaised with our system providers to help create the ideal payment file formats for the job. The team regularly updated us on progress so we knew exactly what was happening at every stage.
Get in touch with us to find out how we can help you switch – quickly, easily, and affordably – or continue reading about our main services below:
