Hosted payments portals rose up as the next big thing in the payments industry. Merchants adopt this technology to offer a self-serve method for customers to pay online. This payment method ranks especially popular with large energy and utility companies that deal with thousands of transactions every day. With a dedicated payments portal page, these organizations allow customers to log in and pay conveniently on the home website.
This blog talks about the benefits of adopting the payments portal technology.
Why Should Companies Adopt a Hosted Payments Portal?
Provide a Seamless Customer Experience
Customers who pay online only trust websites that look safe and offer a seamless payment experience. Without a well-designed payments page interface, companies lose out on potential customers who like to pay for services online. Modern hosted payments portals are entirely customizable to mimic the merchant’s website. Our tech-savvy developers easily create a payments page that replicates all the business’s branding elements.
The custom payment page helps merchants create a seamless payment experience right on their website. With a dedicated payments page and login options embedded right onto the existing website, the customers feel safer making payments on a trusted source.
Offer Customers a Convenient Way to Pay
Customers prefer the flexibility to pay when they want and how they want. Studies show that nearly 2.14 billion people across the globe used online payments in the year 2021, up from 1.6 billion in 2016. It is clear that the market for online payments is just going to increase further with digitization. With a hosted payments portal, the customers log in to their account and pay their bills whenever they want on the internet. These customers also have access to the following features on a well-designed payments portal:
- View payment history
- Set up autopay
- Store payment methods
- View account statement
Check out this short video to see how end customers use a payments portal solution to complete transactions.
Integrate Multiple Payment Solutions
The top payment processors help merchants offer different payment solutions to their customers. Some of the most widely used payment solutions include:
Adopt Multiple Payment Methods
Now merchants don’t partner with multiple payment processors to accept payments via different modes. Instead, merchants now rely on a single payment processor to accept payments via both ACH and credit cards on a comprehensive platform. All data on a single cohesive platform helps merchants save time and accept payments more seamlessly.
Adopt Next-Gen PCI Compliance
Before partnering with a payment processor, merchants should look for the best possible PCI compliance. PCI compliance helps the merchants ensure that no sensitive customer payment data stays on their system during the payment processing phase. Also, it encrypts and protects the customer data so that all customer information stays behind locked doors in the event of a security breach.
Store Basic Payment Information
Large companies need to create thousands of invoices every day. These companies store their customers’ primary contact information for quicker invoice generation and disbursal with the hosted payments portals.
Track and Manage Payments with a Virtual Terminal
Companies also use the complimentary virtual terminal tech to track and manage payments for their customers on the internet. Learn more about the benefits of adopting advanced virtual terminals.
Set up Single and Recurring Transactions
Energy and utility companies mainly deal with repeat customers that need to pay their bills on a monthly or a weekly repeating cycle. Instead of creating a new payment invoice/link every time, these companies now generate recurring transactions on behalf of their customers. Using recurring ACH and the necessary authorization, they automatically debit a fixed amount from their customers’ bank accounts to complete the transaction.
Companies that adopt hosted payments portals unlock the potential to grow their business on the internet. With internet-enabled payments, they reach customers far away and collect payments within seconds. Want to adopt a payments portal solution that helps your organization get more customers? Design your customer payment portal!
Date originally published: March 24, 2022
