A leading provider of B2B risk management saw credit cards as the best way to enable autopay for their customers to reduce critical transaction friction. But credit cards didn’t just add customer convenience – they also brought a significant business cost in the form of acceptance fees. Surcharging was needed to deflect this cost, but the company required a solution that could integrate into their proprietary customer portal, which was built in-house. With the ability to integrate directly into their existing platform via API technology, while also providing the flexibility of choosing where to surcharge, so only high-cost lines could be targeted, InterPayments was the clear solution for the company’s needs.
Results
As a result of this one-time integration with InterPayments, the company delivered operational savings of about $1.5 million on $64 million of transactions in a single year – a recovery rate of 78% of incurred credit card fees. These anticipated gains began the day the surcharge program began. The company recovered the cost of implementing the program in weeks, and because the company was able to easily select and change who gets surcharged and at what rate, there was no impact on the customer experience.
About the Company
Industry: B2B Risk Management Software-as-a-Service
Company Size: Large (500+ employees, $250M+ annual revenue)
Location: Headquartered in the United States, with global sales in the US and Canada
Background: A leading SaaS company that provides solutions that assist companies with risk management, compliance, sustainability, and more
Challenges
Expand credit card acceptance with minimal cost – The company knew that expanding credit card acceptance was critical to reducing payment friction and DSO while growing the customer base. Tools like autopay benefited both customers and the company, who expected more consistent cashflow as a result. But the fees associated with credit cards threatened to eliminate the operating margin the company wanted to realize. They saw the recovery of credit card fees via surcharging as a solution with immediate impact. Fees took up to 3% from every transaction, cutting millions of dollars from their quarterly profits. Lower-cost ACH and debit payments would not be surcharged, allowing customers to avoid the fee entirely.
Compatibility with existing NetSuite and Zuora systems – The foundation of the company’s business was its customer portal – a proprietary solution built in-house that offered essential differentiating advantages over its competition. Replacing it was not an option; even ripping and replacing its payment component, which included connections to NetSuite and Zuora, came with unacceptable risk. The ideal surcharging solution for the company would integrate directly with the existing payment infrastructure.
Flexibility to choose when to surcharge – The company didn’t want to surcharge every customer. Some of their most loyal and longest customers paid with credit card, and the company didn’t see any reason to change those relationships. Ideally, the company wanted to apply surcharges only to new customers and customers using the new autopay solution since these customers would incur credit card fees on a monthly basis.
The Solution
Among the surcharging solutions available to the company, InterPayments offered the best of all worlds. It could integrate directly into the existing customer portal via API technology, and it allowed the flexibility to only surcharge certain business lines automatically. This meant the company could surcharge exactly according to its initial plan, with the ability to make changes whenever it wanted. And it didn’t just mitigate risk from maintaining all its current technology – InterPayments also offered full indemnification from compliance action.
A Tech-Forward Answer to Compliance and Customization
Integrating seamlessly into the existing technology stack of the customer portal, NetSuite and Zuora, was only possible because of InterPayments’ unique API-driven solution. This approach also allowed InterPayments to deliver maximum flexibility regarding how the customer can surcharge clients. To minimize customer impact, the company only surcharged new customers and customers on autopay, as well as a few other select special cases. In many instances, the surcharge could be waived entirely, and the customer always had the option to switch to a lower-cost payment option to avoid the charge.
The company also wanted to understand the exact dollar amount these decisions would impact so it could change them in real-time as needed. InterPayments allowed for all of this, and provided a team of experts to walk the company through all of the details.
Interested in using InterPayments with your existing payment technology? Talk to us today.