How Cloud-Based Payment Platforms Are Changing the Way Retailers Do Business

A retailer's primary concern should center on customer experience, marketability, increasing sales and reducing costs. Payments should be an afterthought for merchants, but they've long been a bottleneck, impacting the ability to grow market share and causing missed revenue opportunities.

Historically, the payments ecosystem has been disjointed and time intensive, creating tremendous operational inefficiencies. With so much riding on payment performance, merchants are seeking simpler, streamlined payments solutions that can accommodate geographic growth and new demands to adapt quickly and seamlessly to the constantly evolving retail landscape.

Leveraging the Power of the Cloud
The marriage of cloud technology and payment processing is creating new opportunities for retailers. In a typical payment system scenario, merchants are tasked with researching and securing a payment solution and an acquiring bank to process transactions. In addition to the pain and inefficiency of initial setups, which tend to occupy precious internal IT resources and shift focus off of core issues, the retailer is responsible for integrating and maintaining the myriad of solutions and system it's using. It's not uncommon for large merchants to juggle well over 50 payments-related integrations.

Cloud-based payment platforms eliminate many of the challenges associated with traditional payment solutions. Using cloud technology, retailers have access to a central payments ecosystem that makes finding payments products and acquirers much easier. All parties have direct access to each other, which radically simplifies the payments process and reduces the burden on retailers.

With the right technology, cloud-based payments processing helps merchants avoid fragmentation and leverage innovation for meaningful business growth.

Benefits of Cloud-Based Payment Solutions
Cloud technology is changing the way retailers handle payments processing. The transition to a cloud-based payments ecosystem is being driven by several benefits that are available to nearly all retailers, regardless of the channels they use to connect with consumers. They include the following:

1. Lower barriers to entry. Most retailers are forced to overcome a variety of payments-based obstacles, including up-front costs, distribution channels and integration. The cloud minimizes these requirements and makes it easier for merchants to quickly launch a robust payments solution with global reach.

2. Faster processing speeds. Cloud technology is known for delivering operational speed and efficiency. Cloud-based payment platforms achieve processing speeds up to 100 times faster than traditional methods. They also eliminate costly maintenance and energy fees through server and hardware minimization.

3. Greater flexibility. Flexibility and scalability are core concerns for growing retailers. Unlike traditional payments solutions, the cloud allows retailers to use the products that are best suited to their needs while managing a single integration. As business requirements change, merchants can effortlessly transition among solutions without interrupting their service.

4. Actionable insights. One of the most valuable benefits cloud technology offers retailers is the ability to leverage data. The best cloud-based payments platforms enable merchants to aggregate and analyze previously fragmented data into one intelligent reporting tool, transforming data from several sources into actionable insights.

The transition to a cloud-based payments platform is relatively simple and pain-free for retailers. By moving their payments processes to the cloud, merchants can realize measurable improvements in their payment ecosystems as well as protect their ability to deliver high quality, end-to-end customer experiences.

Oliver Rajic is the CEO of Alpha Payments Cloud, a payments-focused, cloud-based IT firm dedicated to providing merchants, banks and payment product providers unprecedented access to the global payments world via one integration and platform.