A Complete Guide on Channel Partner Programs for Advanced Payment Solutions

November 01, 2022

The top consulting companies and software vendors often have unbreakable ties with their merchants. These companies have a decisive say in the technologies the merchant adopts, the processes they implement, and the vendors they choose. The best firms are excellent at cutting through the noise to identify the best possible solutions for their clients. However, they need not be an expert at everything.

We understand that these organizations need not be as tech-savvy as a pure-play technology company. Instead, the value they offer lies in selecting and implementing said technologies. At iCG, we host one of the best channel partner programs in the payments industry to help these companies. We work with consultancies and software vendors to help them offer seamless, innovative payment technologies to support their customers. guide discusses the following:

 

Why Do You Need a Channel Partner Program for Payments?

Business Growth

ISOs and ISVs that want to stay relevant must partner with the latest technology and service providers in the market. They need to have an entire roster of partners to offer their customers. An active partnership with a tech-savvy payment processor helps the consultants get ready for deployment and support at a moment's notice.   

Customer Requirements

No industry has escaped the need for a complete digital transformation overhaul. We often encounter customers that start with one payment technology and scale to several solutions within the first few weeks. Fast-growing businesses are willing to pay through their teeth to maintain a competitive moat around their business. Merchants that deal with a high volume of transactions find massive ROI with the latest payment technologies within the first few weeks of implementation.

Partners with access to the latest payment technologies via partnerships position themselves as reliable consultants for these high-growth businesses.

Too Many Vendors

The consulting business is growing at an unprecedented pace. Most companies that show rapid growth prefer relying on large consultancies with access to thousands of technology and implementation partners. These consultancies have dedicated relationship and partner managers to scale operations for the merchants quickly. The consultancies with the most reliable partners compete for million-dollar contracts easily with the proper partner support.

Access to different partners with unique technologies or a one-stop solution provider helps them beat other consultancies to gain that edge while negotiating with the merchants.

Lack of Support

The top tech-savvy payment partners have dedicated partner programs to support ISO/ISV consultancies. Well-designed channel partner programs offer support in the form of:

  • Marketing materials to help the sales reps win
  • Training for the individual agents and sales reps
  • Dedicated support for partner merchants
  • Seamless integration with the ISV technology
  • On-call support for discovery and sales conversations

Become a Partner

 

Benefits of the Best SaaS Partner Program for Our Partners

One-Stop Solution for a Full Suite of Solutions

Offering a host of one-stop solutions helps you attract more merchants. The freedom to mix and match different capabilities of these solutions serves the needs of a more extensive audience base. Integrated payment gateway providers like iCheckGateway.com (iCG) offer innovative payment solutions like SMS Payments, IVR Payments, Email Invoicing, Virtual Terminal, and more.

Streamlined Processes

The team at iCG has spent years developing and refining the partner program. We work with ISOs, ISVs, resellers, and direct merchants. A streamlined partner onboarding and support process helps our team offer extended technological and sales support. We also work directly with the referred merchants to help them make the most of our payment technologies.  

Our trustworthy partner team helps the partners with marketing and sales resources to help them win more clients. The team also offers them training on LinkedIn to identify new prospects in an ever-growing market. The necessary training on best sales practices helps our partners win more deals while retaining their existing customers longer. Our onboarding team helps business owners go online with intuitive payment technologies within a few weeks.

Increased Profit Margins

A larger suite of solutions helps our partners increase their wallet share per merchant. This is especially helpful for our partners still in a nascent stage supporting a handful of merchants. The increased wallet share per merchant easily offsets the higher onboarding cost for growing partners. Our partners usually scale their operations much faster since most merchants do not stop at just one technology. In fact, merchants often adopt multiple technologies once they've tasted the speed and reliability of digital payment processing.

Low Developer Costs

iCG attributes some of its success to the plug-and-play functionality of our innovative payment solutions. In most of our conversations, business owners do not need to have an in-house tech team to implement our solutions. They gain an omnichannel approach to accepting payments without the high costs of developing something from scratch. After developing a payments strategy with our sales team, signing the application agreement, and working with our tech support team to customize their choices, corporations quickly start accepting payments without spending millions of dollars or hiring an in-house tech team to develop the code.

Additionally, working with iCG reduces the merchant's PCI scope and falls under our umbrella of guidance to stay up to date, protected by the latest security measures that the PCI-DSS and Nacha payment regulatory organizations require.

Revenue Share Program

We also have a revenue share program to help our partners succeed. With a well-defined tiered plan for Referral Partners, Value Added Resellers (VARs), ISOs, and ISVs, we offer the necessary level of support for all types of partnership models. 

  • Referral Program: Our referral program takes care of the entire technology setup and support for the merchant. The referring partner gets their due finder's fee while we care for the rest. 
  • Partnership Program: Our partnership program with Value Added Resellers features different tiers of partnership depending on the kind of support required. In some cases, merchants need additional development support for multiple solutions. In other cases, they already have a well-set credit card processing unit and need help for ACH, payment portal, or complementary tech solutions.
  • ISOs and ISVs: Get in touch with a dedicated partner manager from iCG to learn how we handle our sales and integration partners.

Here's a guide on how channel partners help merchants adopt real-time latest payment technologies.

Schedule a Call to Discuss Your Payment Technology Requirements

 

Benefits for Your Merchants

Comprehensive Support

Our direct merchant support team is proud of industry-leading turnaround times to ensure an excellent uptime for the merchant business. We use the latest automation tech internally to route the support queries to the correct team for a faster resolution. Our support is not only limited to the onboarding process. We also help solve other tech queries to ensure that the business does not suffer due to a broken payment link.

Complete Customization

While plug-and-play technologies are always an option, we realize that large commercial customers often need a certain degree of customization to enhance their brand image. The following customizable solutions on our roster offer business owners complete control over their payment operations.

  • Hosted Payment Portals
    iCG's hosted payment portals mimic the host website of the business to increase confidence for the end consumer. Duplicating and mimicking the payment portal's landing pages helps end consumers pay for the product/service without ever feeling like they left the website. We also support customizable iFrame technologies to uphold compliance laws while collecting payment information. 
  • Plugins and Developer Tools
    Powerful back-end plugins for API development help us offer a truly integrated payment solution that connects existing software systems with our payment portal. Our QuickBooks integration solutions support a two-way sync that pushes and pulls data directly from the back-end accounting systems into the payment portal for automation. 
  • Virtual Terminals
    iCG's virtual terminal solutions help business owners track their payments on the go. The customizable dashboards help the merchants develop detailed dashboards to drill down on their payment data within seconds. Our cloud-based virtual terminal for data management brings information from all our customizable and complementary payment technologies on a single user-friendly platform.

Access to Latest Complementary Technologies

Our customers can access some of the world's most modern and innovative payment technologies. These include:

Download a Full Catalog of Innovative Payment Solutions

Top Notch Security with the Latest Compliance Measures

iCG is PCI-DSS Level 1 certified to offer the highest level of security with credit card payments. Our ACH solutions are Nacha-certified to ensure safe and fast ACH payments. We also support tokenization and data encryption to increase our payment systems' safety further. Learn more about:

Merchants can use our guide to detect and prevent fraud while adopting faster payment systems.

Cash Discount Platform

ISO credit card processors often have active relationships with their merchants. They offer the necessary credit card processing security and technology to merchants for accepting payments in person. However, they need additional support for taking payments via credit cards in a card-not-present situation or via online payments. iCG's credit card processing technology helps merchants accept credit cards securely online.

However, we know that using credit cards online in a card-not-present fashion attracts unnecessary heavy fees. Therefore, we often recommend merchants look at online ACH solutions as a more affordable and reliable alternative. ACH payment processing is the most affordable way of processing payments online. Moreover, merchants that accept online payments via ACH can offer cash discounts to their customers to bring down the overall cost of the sale. Learn more about cash discounts programs below:

 

Industries that Leverage a Partner Program

iCG's partner program supports ISOs and ISVs from various verticals. We work with financial as well as non-financial institutions to help leverage the above-mentioned payment processing technologies to their full potential. The top industries that leverage our payment solutions include:

Banking and Financial Companies

Well-established old banks and credit unions have deep-rooted societal ties. They are an integral part of the growth of several communities. These banks and credit unions rarely have the resources to compete with the larger banks that have nearly unlimited resources to develop the latest technology from scratch. We work with these large and small financial institutions to help them adopt innovative payment technologies without spending millions. Discover the five best practices for bank-fintech partner relationships. Check out more applications and guides for payment processing:

Healthcare

Large healthcare institutions leverage medical billing and email invoicing solutions to serve thousands of patients. They also adopt self-serve hosted payment portals and IVR solutions to collect patients' payments without needing 24x7 dedicated billing assistants. iCG works with medical software companies and other ISVs to integrate payment solutions as part of their software platform. The robust and seamless integration of payment data with patient data helps the medical software provider offer a true one-stop solution to large hospitals and clinics. Discover the power of payment technologies for healthcare:

Municipalities and Utilities

Old-school municipality organizations and utility companies often face bottlenecks in serving their customers due to legacy systems and inefficient processes. They take days, sometimes weeks, to process utility bills and municipality tax payments. Using the most efficient payment technologies, which Fednow Service will now empower, helps these companies collect payments from a large community via self-serve automation. Here's how these organizations use payment processing technologies:

Insurance

Prominent insurance companies leverage a combination of Recurring Payments, SMS Payments, Emai Invoicing, and Virtual Terminals to support their client base. They reduce the churn rate and offer better premium collection options with these technologies. Instead of spending millions and years developing technologies from scratch, insurance companies can partner with iCG to get started.

Property Management and Leasing Services

Modern property managers and leasing service providers do not collect rent via paper checks or cash anymore. Instead, they rely on online payment technologies for remote rent collection. 

Payroll and Accounting Services

Recurring payment technologies based on the ACH platform help payroll and accounting management companies automate payments. Also, they use our QuickBooks plugins to automate their reconciliation processes for hundreds of clients with thousands of employees.

Non-Profits and Religious Organizations

Non-profits also use modern technologies to collect donations for humanitarian causes. Recurring payments help them maintain an active pool of repeat donors, while SMS ayments help them stay in touch with their dormant donors. Additionally, they use online donation platform technology to collect donations for specific causes and fundraising events.

Apart from this, advertising, affiliate marketing, TV broadcasting, and smaller merchants use a combination of SaaS applications and online payment processing to expand operations. Using mobile apps and efficient SaaS products helps them save time and manage their business on the go.

 

How to Choose the Right Integrated Payments Partnerships to Help Your Merchants?

The top payment processors hopefully have the same mission as iCG, to empower businesses and their customers by making transactions easy through innovative payment solutions that drive business growth and optimize visibility. They increase the scope of your revenue and market share while keeping your existing customers happy. The following mini-guide will help you choose the perfect payment partner for your customers: 

Step 1: Make a List of Current Technology Stack

Identify the technologies that you currently offer via your tech partners. Spend enough time on this activity to identify your exact tech stack from all partners. Compare marketing slicks and speak with partner managers from the tech partner companies to understand their technologies better.

Step 2: Conduct Customer Survey for Additional Technology Requirements

Conduct a customer survey with old customers and new leads to see which technologies they need. Some merchants might need just one payment technology, while others may need an omnichannel approach to serve their customer base. Compare the list of solutions that your merchants need with the tech stack list that you currently offer.

Step 3: Look for a One-Stop Solution

While partnering with multiple payment technology providers is advisable, partnering with one-stop solution providers is more necessary. These all-in-one providers fulfill several technical requirements for your merchants single-handedly. A seamless one-on-one pairing between your merchant and such a tech partner helps you reduce the number of internal links to manage.

Step 4: Compare the Top Vendors

Compare the top one-stop solution providers to see which ones offer the solutions you need.

Step 5: Evaluate Programs Based on Technology Stack, Support, and Scalability

While choosing the right partner, look for programs offering additional tech support and scalability. Often the pricier channel sales partner models offer significantly higher ROI than the cheaper ones. Look for value, not price.

Step 6: Choose the Partner

After evaluating enough tech partners, choose the ones that fit your bill and have the support/technologies needed to serve a significant chunk of your merchant clients.

Step 7: Evaluate the Value Proposition Every Quarter

Choosing the right partner is just a part of the process. Evaluate your partnership terms and managed services requirements every quarter to ensure that you get the maximum ROI from your partnership. 

Here are some guides that will help you choose the right technology partner for your organization:

 

Getting Started with iCG

The iCG partner managers have worked with hundreds of ISOs and ISVs over the last few years. We have the necessary resources to train partners on the product suite and selling techniques. Our onboarding team generates the best training programs and marketing materials that make selling easy. We also have in-house developers that work with ISVs to integrate our payment solutions into their offers.

Getting started with iCG is as simple as 1-2-3. 

  • Click the become a partner button below, and our partner managers will reach out to you. 
  • We follow the initial call with a more detailed one that discusses synergies and the value we bring to the table.
  • Upon agreement, we sign a partnership with you to help your merchants with the latest payment technologies and offer the desired amount of support needed.

Click the following button and become a partner today and accelerate payments simply, securely, and reliably with iCG!

Become a Partner

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iCG Pay’s innovative solutions help you accelerate payments simply, securely, and reliably.

We help businesses accept and process payments with our suite of next-gen customizable fintech solutions. Our automated technologies help you carry out ACH and credit card transactions on a single easy-to-use platform.

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