Digitalisation has moved from being a rarity to becoming ubiquitous, with companies from every sector having to push most, if not all, of their back end operations into the digital space. For retail, this means being able to conduct and manage transactions, which comes with its own complexities.
Even the most basic transaction, that of receiving payment for goods or services rendered, comes with its own intricacies, especially since e-commerce has become an integral part of retail Is the payment in a local currency, or is it from a neighbouring country? What about refunds, would those be easily processed? Would a platform encompassing all this take a lot to understand and use?
These questions highlight the importance for a retailer to find the right payment gateway as a partner, which would not only answer the concerns above but offer even more. As it stands, payment partners today can do a lot more than what they offered as near as five years ago, both for established businesses and start-ups.
A part of the ability to offer more comes down to the lines between a “traditional” acquiring institution, a bank, a currency exchange, and a payment gateway becoming blurred as these services started getting rolled into one. The power of interconnected technology now is such that the payment platform provider’s abilities now stretch so much further than simple monetary interchange.
Source: Elavon
Multiple currencies? Not a problem
One particular success story is that of Didier Magne and Tule Park, who founded the cosmeceutical brand Skin Diligent in 2018. Based in Notting Hill, London, the brand launched its product range online. To power their online store, Magne and Park searched for a “very reputable, very sleek gateway” that could support them and their goals to operate in multiple markets, which led them to Opayo (part of Elavon).
“We found Opayo, and our account manager went one step further than the rest. She looked at what we wanted to do, saw it wasn’t a risk, and committed through to the end,” said Park. Ultimately deciding on Opayo as their gateway and Elavon as their acquirer, Skin Diligent can now accept payments in euros from French outlets just as well as they can accept pounds in the UK.
Magne and Park were also impressed with the onboarding process, calling it “sincerely proper service”.
“We were impressed by onboarding and whenever we’ve had issues since and needed help or support, there’s always someone who can understand and stay on the phone until it’s sorted out,” said Magne.
All the better to focus on the important things
Finding a payment gateway partner that is a good fit for a business also allows a business owner to focus on the things that truly matter to them, such as growing their business. Stephen Kennedy, who owns the growing coffee shop chain Copper + Straw in Ireland, can attest to this.
“I’m not an accountant and I want to spend my time running a coffee shop, ensuring our customers have an exceptional experience and researching the market for the best guest roasters out there, keeping the focus on coffee,” said Kennedy, who started looking for a payment provider that offered better customer care after opening his second coffee shop.
With Elavon as a payment partner, Kennedy knew that, while he would still have to do the financials, he can now do so “in the most efficient way and spend the least amount of time on that side of things”.
Not only has he been freed up to focus on his business, but another boon offered by Elavon was an easy-to-use POS system, using talech™ software through iPad terminals linked to an Ingenico card machine, which he says is “really user friendly and incredibly fast”. The back end also allows him to easily add and group new products, add new employees, monitor cash management and access a range of reports.
Keeping traditions alive
Dublin’s Café Diem leads a double life: coffee shop by day, pizzeria by night. However, founder Mo Mrabat shares that it is much more than that.
“It’s not just a coffee shop; it’s a community. Local groups meet here, new visitors chat with regulars, and people even leave their spare keys here with me. I always call them the Café Diem ‘family’… I never really call them ‘customers’,” said Mo.
He knows that he is a chef and not an accountant, with food as his love and focus. However, this means he needed a payment solution that could not only simplify every aspect of running his business, but could also handle the differences between Café Diem and Mo’s Pizza.
By choosing Elavon’s Poynt as a POS, Mo had a smart, wireless terminal that lets diners pay at the counter or their table, indoors or outside, as well as online or over the phone, allowing him to focus on expanding his business as well as his community.
“Elavon gives you the opportunity to customise your terminal – you can add apps tailored for your business, add different categories, and identify your busiest times and most popular items. In one system, you can do everything,” he said, adding that the cloud system ElavonConnect allowed him to check his business from anywhere in real-time.
Elavon as a digital payment partner
Being so customisable means Elavon is able to handle a diverse range of business needs, eschewing the one-size-fits-all model while being able to face the hurdles of an everchanging business landscape.
With the Elavon offerings, companies of any size get a collection of next-generation technology products that power their payments online and in person. But with that platform comes the eye for detail and support from a dedicated team of human operators whose job is to make sure those details are noted, catered for, and baked into everything the technology does.
To learn more about this uniquely powerful proposition, reach out to this market leader for traders in Ireland and the UK today.
