In the ever-growing complexity of today’s e-commerce world, organizations are facing more and more the challenge of understanding their needs and identifying and selecting the appropriate business partners for offering e-commerce capabilities.

Planning the elements of the end-to-end e-commerce strategy starts with the product and service value proposition. It determines the online strategy, payment methods and defines the business processes overall.

Many merchants spend a lot of money and resources to develop incredibly sophisticated web-shops and integrate best of breed e-commerce platforms with the latest technology. An excellent online experience will immediately vanish, however, when the shopper’s preferred local payment method or currency is not available, or when payment pages are not customized to the look and feel of the brand.

The curse of in-differentiation

Unfortunately, payment services providers and acquirers are nowadays perceived to be an easy exchangeable commodity in the full service e-commerce chain. The contrary is the true however. Payment service providers offer many differentiated services. It is these services that could define your success.

Traditional payment services such as implementation support, fraud prevention management, reconciliation, and non-traditional services such as sales tax reporting and collection of accounts receivables are KEY to a successful e-commerce story and high conversion rates.

Price is only an issue in the absence of value

The pressures of cost reduction in the last years however have led to a service decrease. The outcome of the resulting price erosion has been an unwanted, but predictable effect which caused service propositions and technologic developments to be discontinued or postponed, and strategic developments and partnerships to be dissolved. The understandable pressure from the merchants to ‘go live’ and their expectation of immediate revenue generation has led to, sometimes, the wrong decisions on the last mile.

Payments in an e-commerce environment are never an isolated activity as it touches all areas of an organization.

Choosing the right payment services should therefore be a collaborative exercise within an organization. Involving all stakeholders like the e-commerce manager, finance & administration and IT will contribute to create required internal awareness that the success of the overall e-business processes is the responsibility of everyone involved in the creation of it.

The critical difference between you and your competitors isn’t always about who offers the better product or service, but the experience customers have while dealing with you throughout the end-to-end full service e-commerce process. 

Price as the only differentiator if everything else is equal

A solution is a mixture composed of two or more substances dissolving in another to deliver a product service mix that enables the merchant to be successful in a full service e-commerce environment.

When choosing your PSP be cost-effective, not cheap.