UniPay Gateway Payment Advice

Merchant of Record and Payment Facilitator
Merchant of record or MOR is an essential link between a company that needs to accept electronic payments and consumers of its products. Merchant of record concept goes far beyond collecting payments for products and services. MOR is responsible for many things related to sales process, such as merchant funding, withholding of taxes and transaction processing fees, chargeback management, etc. If a merchant operates through some online marketplace, then its...
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The Right time for Transaction Processing Cost Reduction
Transaction processing cost reduction has always been a powerful tool to increase the revenues for many companies working in the merchant services industry. While in times of economical growth the way to increase revenue is to boost the sales, in times of potential or actual recession, cost reduction might work better. In a broad sense, transaction cost reduction strategy should involve direct and indirect costs. Direct costs can be reduced...
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Enterprise Payment Technology for an Investment Company
An investment company with a large portfolio often faces the problem of payment flow unification. In the times when Markowitz came up with his portfolio optimization theory there were no electronic payment technologies yet. However, now implementation of a robust and unified enterprise payment technology is an essential component of investment portfolio optimization. A venture capital firm or a private equity private company needs to unify its operations  in order...
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Before Starting a Payment Facilitation Project
Many companies are considering the prospect of becoming a payment facilitator as the most beneficial development of their business model. Just like any other project, related to merchant services industry, a payment facilitation project consists of a business phase and a technical phase. Business phase is about finding an acquiring partner. Technical phase is about finding a technical platform. However, once you’ve found an acquiring\processing partner, you have to clarify...
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How to Start a Payment Gateway
If you want to build a payment gateway from scratch or license one of online gateway solutions to provide gateway services under your own brand, you need to understand the key aspects of the process. Building or licensing your own payment gateway involves two conceptual aspects: business and technical. First, in order to be able to provide online payment gateway services, beside the gateway solution itself, you need an acquiring...
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White label Payment Facilitator Model
Many companies at the present-day merchant services market are considering the prospect of becoming a payment facilitator. While becoming a full-fledged PayFac is associated with a burden of multiple requirements and responsibilities, a white-label solution may be a plausible option even for those, who are not ready to assume this burden all at once. White label services provision is an arrangement when all the services associated with merchant lifecycle...
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Your Own Payment Gateway Similar to Stripe or Square
The prospect of having your own payment gateway like Stripe or Square often seems to be the light at the end of the tunnel and the goal that, once achieved, will allow you to solve much of financial and technical problems your company experiences. Although at the start of their operations many merchants find Stripe or Square to be the best payment platform they can partner with, as they grow, they...
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Open Source Payment Gateway: Fees and Savings
Some businesses that use the services of third-party gateway providers often wonder if it would be more beneficial for them to license an open source payment gateway product or develop a payment gateway of their own. Will such a transition allow them save on credit card processing fees? For each particular business model case the answer might be different. Credit card merchant fees include different cost items. There are credit card...
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Virtual Payment Facilitator Model
Virtual payment facilitator model is a handy option for software platform providers that want to increase their revenues by providing merchant services to their clients. If a SaaS or POS platform provider wants to become a payment facilitator but is not ready for significant upfront costs and for assuming the whole set of PayFac-specific responsibilities, then virtual payment facilitator model is a good “try it before buy it” in-between solution....
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On the way to Payment Facilitator Model
Payment facilitator model implementation is a beneficial option for many SaaS and POS platform providers. A software platform provider, that is, usually, acting as an ordinary ISO, already has a certain degree of control over its customers, but is unable to influence the crucial processes, involved in merchant lifecycle, such as merchant onboarding, funding, remittance, reconciliation, etc. By assuming responsibility for part or all of these processes, a software platform...
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Smart Processing Cost Reduction Strategies
Processing cost reduction is one of the major challenges faced by merchants and payment facilitators worldwide. Typical credit card processing cost reduction strategies, usually, involve search for a new processor or negotiating better terms with the existing one. However, these strategies are beneficial only if they are applied in a smart way. Ironically enough, transaction cost itself is not the only component you should be trying to reduce. Beside transaction...
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Transaction Processing Cost Reduction through Negotiations
Cost reduction is a common problem for many merchants and payment facilitators. Credit card processing cost as percentage of revenues sometimes seems too high, especially if you add gateway and tokenization fees. Most companies use one of the two approaches to reduce transaction cost. They either try to negotiate lower cost of credit card processing with their current service provider or look for a new processor to offer cheaper services....
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Acquirer, Processor, Gateway: Who is who?
People often tend to confuse the concepts of acquirer, payment processor, and payment gateway. A merchant acquirer or an acquiring bank is a bank that underwrites (and later funds) a merchant and (what is important) assumes the liability and risk, associated with credit card fraud and chargebacks. A payment processor handles the technical aspects of transaction processing and is connected to the banking system through the respective acquiring partner. A...
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Credit Card Processing without a Merchant Account
A merchant account is an essential part of credit card processing, although some people mistakenly think that they can successfully accept credit card payments without opening one. The truth is that merchant services entail serious risks and financial obligations associated with consumer and merchant fraud, credit card chargeback handling, and, potentially, ACH returns (if ACH payments are involved). Some business has to assume these risks and obligations in order to...
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ISO versus Payment Facilitator: Who Survives?
In recent years payment facilitator concept has been rapidly gaining popularity. One of the reasons for this phenomenon is that many companies (including former independent sales organizations (ISO)) find it more profitable to combine the functions of an online gateway provider and a merchant service provider (MSP). Implementation of the payment facilitator model is an especially profitable and promising step if you are an ISO, a Saas platform provider, an...
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