Credit Card Payments For Salesforce

Are you looking at the options for taking credit card payments from within Salesforce CRM or from a public website with payment and contact details stored in Salesforce CRM?

I’ve written this guide to assist with your selection and decision process.

1. Buy or design

   You could organise a developer to design a custom integration. Whilst this option may not take too much effort, you’ll now find that many pre-built solutions are not much more than what you would pay for a payment gateway on its own. In addition, the pre-built solutions have been road tested thoroughly so you can be sure they work and that your customer’s funds will always be securely processed with 100% accuracy.

2. Payment Gateway and Merchant Facility

   To be able to process credit card payments, the solution requires both a Payment Gateway and a Merchant Facility.
   A Payment Gateway is the eCommerce software that authorises the eCommerce transaction.
   A Merchant Facility is an account managed by the acquiring bank that settles funds into your account.The pre-built solutions on the AppExchange all work with a Payment Gateway. The Payment Gateway will settle into the Merchant Facility that then puts the funds into your bank account.When evaluating a credit card payment solution, you should have a look at the payment gateway included or that works with the solution for the following attributes.

   1. Is the payment gateway bank specific? If so, this could mean your banking is tied to that bank making it more difficult to swap banks should the need ever arise.
   2. Does the payment gateway work in your country?
   3. Can the payment gateway work with a Merchant Facility that can settle into your bank?
   4. Does the payment gateway support all of the types of credit cards your organisation will be accepting?
   5. Check the types of transactions supported. The common ones required are:
      • Purchase
      • Refunds
      • Authorisation and Authorisation Complete
      • Tokenisation – for charging a card later or regular payments.

When looking at the Merchant Facility, you may also want to check if you need to settle your funds into multiple bank accounts? If so, are these in different currencies and is this supported by the payment gateway and merchant facility?

3. Fees

   There are generally a number different fees and charges. These vary a lot between providers. Be sure to get the costs for all components as some organisations will give some components away for free and then charge a higher rate or percentage in other components.In preparation for obtaining pricing, it pays to get a realistic estimate of the number of transactions you’ll be doing a year and the anticipated total sales volume.Fees and pricing are generally divided into these three categories.

   1. Software Solution.
      This is the AppExchange solution or software that provides the integration into Salesforce CRM. Check to see if this option has add-on modules and pricing, also if this is a per-user or per-organisation pricing.
   2. Payment Gateway
      Look at the per transaction fees, the per settling bank account fees, setup or termination fees and fees based on a percentage of dollars transacted.
   3. Merchant Facility Fees
      Look at the per transaction fees, per bank account fees, setup or termination fees, monthly fees, charge back fees and for other fees.

Tip: Often people think they can only get a Merchant Facility with their current bank. You can in fact get the Merchant Facility with another bank and still have those funds settled into your bank account. This could be a good time to shop around and get the best rates.

4. Native App or Mash-up

   A Native App is one that is written using the Salesforce toolset. A mashed-up version is one where the vendor has their own hosted application and have embedded their App into Salesforce or provided links from Salesforce.A Native App provides many advantages. This include:

   1. Users only having to learn one application
   2. The data is stored in one place making it possible to report and create dashboards using the single tools that are provided by Salesforce CRM. It saves users from having to get some reports from Salesforce and others from the vendors systems.
   3. Standard Salesforce features such as workflows, validation rules, salesforce security and AppExchange apps can all work with the solution.

5. Providing more than just credit card processing

   Often the applications provide more than just taking credit card payments. Some solutions also include one or more of the following:

   1. Handling of manual payments, e.g. Cash, Cheque Money Orders
   2. Produce automated receipting
   3. Built in fundraising options for non-profits
   4. Recurring payments and regular giving
   5. Match the online contact information entered online with existing contacts within your instance of Salesforce
   6. Memberships Management – professional associations, friends of groups etc.
   7. Subscriptions Management – magazines, wine clubs etc.
   8. Events Management
   9. Direct Debits processing
   10. Fundraising

In addition to checking the above, it’s always a good idea to review the AppExchange reviews or even better speak with an existing customer of the vendor if possible.

I hope the above has provided you with some useful information and please do consider Payments2Us as one of your evaluation options.