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Payway provides soup to nuts payment-processing services, which include an integrated payment gateway and merchant account services. Below is our recent interview with David Fabrizio, Principal at Payway:
Q: Could you provide our readers with a brief introduction to Payway?
A: We built our payment gateway and merchant services solution to be responsive to the needs of merchants who operate a recurring payment business model, like many of the publishing companies we have served since 1984. We manage the subscription payment process for some of the largest media companies and that requires us to stay on top and ahead of the ebbs and flows of the industry. We’re still serving many large publishing houses, as well as other companies that might consider their customers to be “subscribers,” such as nonprofit organizations, ticketing, call centers, real estate management companies, and private healthcare services.
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Q: You’ve recently been selected by Kenosha News to help move operations to the cloud; could you tell us something more?
A: The Kenosha News is part of the United Communications Corporation (UCC) and like many businesses with a substantial history, had legacy systems where the accounts payable departments were still manually managing workflows, invoicing and other processes with paper and Excel® spreadsheets.
UCC had been utilizing Payway’s payment gateway and, after a cost analysis, recently added its merchant account service offering as well. Prior to working with Payway, UCC had been using multiple merchant accounts for several of its properties, all with their own processors, rates, and pricing structures. This approach made balancing for the finance team difficult and inefficient. With Payway’s help, UCC was able to consolidate all of its payment processing activity into one streamlined product set – existing entirely in the cloud, and helping to move the news organization’s operations and upgrade its business to the digital age.
Q: What are the benefits of using your Payway platform?
A: With Payway, customers know they are getting a fair deal. Other payment service providers bundle their fees into one rate, fooling many merchants who could be paying less. Although a single percentage seems straightforward and convenient, it allows providers to hide avoidable costs. Nothing makes us happier than uncovering these unnecessary charges during the free cost analysis we provide for prospective customers.
We’re one of the few payment gateways that uses Level III processing to autodetect if a payment is made with a procurement or corporate charge card, enabling the networks to identify which transactions qualify for lower interchange rates. We’ve been able to help our customers save a lot of money – one of our customers saved more than 45k in just three months.
We also offer automated Account Updater. It automatically hunts down outdated credit card information for recurring credit card payments. Companies are losing millions every year to declined payments – we help our customers turn that negative trend into positive cash flow.
Lastly, although we love payments and helping our customers get the best service for the best value, it’s our people that make the difference. None of this would be possible without a support team that has been described as “the best in the business” by many a customer and a sales team whose combined experience tops 60 years. Mary Beth Eddy, Director of Merchant Solutions, and Sean Callahan, director of portal sales, are the first advisor to new clients. It’s their expertise that helps deliver true savings.
Q: What do businesses that operate subscription-based business models need to understand about payments?
A: Payway got its start by processing subscription payments for some of the largest newspaper groups in the country. More than 30 years of experience has taught us a thing or two about subscription payments of all types. It doesn’t matter if you sell a subscription to a physical product like a newspaper or box-of-the-month club, or a digital subscription like online news content or service membership. Chances are that the majority of your payments are received via the web or telephone. Once initial payment is received, then they are set to repeat on a schedule that coincides with future order fulfillments or timed membership payments. The challenges for this business model are twofold—getting the initial payment and keeping the repetitive payments running.
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Q: Why are payments received via the web or telephone different than those that are made in person? Are they processed the same? Why does it matter?
A: Web or telephone payments are known in the industry as card-not-present payments. Although these payments are processed via the same networks as traditional “card present” transactions, they are considered to be a higher risk due to the increased risk of fraud. For a payment to be considered “card present”, the data that is contained in the magnetic strip or chip needs to be processed via a terminal or card reader. Not only do card-not-present transactions carry a higher risk of fraud, they also carry a higher potential for chargebacks, and as a result, higher fees from the networks to process these payments.
Q: What are your plans for the future?
A: Seeing as our expertise lies in card-not-present, recurring transactions, we are concentrating our efforts in markets that operate subscription-based business models. Private healthcare, ticketing, and call centers are just a few examples of the types of markets in which we have the ability to make a significant positive impact. That’s why our development efforts are focused on adding support for the most popular mobile wallets, as well as certified point-to-point encryption (P2PE) devices.
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