IXOPAY on Smart-Routing of transactions and why it matters to merchants

An interview with Rene Siegl, Founder of IXOPAY.


What are the foremost challenges affecting merchants operating on a worldwide scale?

It’s essential for Enterprise Merchants to maximize their profit and save money on transaction fees. That’s why our gateway provides an in-depth overview of all transactions of all webshops in real-time. Enterprise Merchants with multiple brands (webshops) never lose track of their payments as we consolidate all of their transactions through a secure and central payment platform. They can save transaction costs through profit-maximizing features, such as the Smart Routing Engine or the Risk Management Engine.

The eCommerce business is dependent on reliable and secure payment processes to guarantee smooth purchases for end customers and profit-maximizing processing for large-scale merchants. That’s why enterprise organizations trust in our valuable features which provide all payment-related data at one place.

With an experience of nearly 20 years in the payment industry, IXOPAY helps Enterprise Merchants to tackle technical challenges related to recent and current payment industry changes such as new adapter integrations, to manage varying local regulations and to integrate “incompatible”, complex, or even outdated payment technologies. Enterprise Merchants, which, for instance, run several shops with different products and providers, get the chance for even better rates through our gateway. Increased volume gives them the best deal on their transaction fees and increases their profits.

 

(IXOPAY Payment Gateway – Dashboard)

Why is it so important for merchants to be able to adapt to different regions worldwide?

To compete across borders, organizations need to offer their customers an extensive range of payment methods. With IXOPAY, they get connected to +200 payment methods worldwide with just one API integration, including an array of alternative and local payment methods – to reach all potential customers and offer them their preferred payment method and currency. Thus, eCommerce businesses can boost their conversion rates and reduce churn.

Working together with multiple adapters and offering various payment methods make it possible to distribute volumes across multiple providers with regard to pricing tiers.

IXOPAY features a ‘Smart-Routing’ engine – what exactly is ‘Smart’ routing?

Enterprise Merchants usually have contracts with multiple adapters (payment providers and acquirers) which offer different payment methods for various transaction fees. IXOPAY makes it possible to route automatically within multiple adapters according to various parameters such as card type, risk score, geo-location, etc. in order to optimize overall transaction processes. Using the IXOPAY “Smart-Routing Engine” leads to lower transaction costs, reduces decline rates, improves user experience and routes payments to local providers.

Let’s imagine you sell printers through your web shop and an end customer based in the United States orders a printer with an American Express card in US Dollars. The location, payment method, and currency are essential variables for the amount of the transaction fee. IXOPAY selects within your integrated adapters the best rate for this specific customer in order to minimize the transaction fee. For example, payment can be made using the adapters Credorax or Authorize.net. In real-time, the platform routes automatically the payment to the adapter with the lowest transaction fee (e.g. adapter A charges 0.12 US cents; if the transaction fails, it gets routed automatically to adapter B, which charges 0.16 US cents, etc.).

For international payments, for example via credit card, the gateway routes to the most appropriate acquirer, who is more likely to accept the payment – e.g. an American credit card is routed to an American acquirer, the European card gets routed to the geographically closest European acquirer. This minimizes decline rates and provides better conversions.

Depending on whether it is a “low-risk” or “high-risk” brand, suitable adapters can be selected through filter settings and selections in order to keep decline rates as low as possible.

 

 

(IXOPAY Payment Gateway – Smart-Routing Engine)

How do you help merchants to manage the heightened risk of transacting with customers on a global scale?

For every merchant there’s nothing more annoying than fraudulent transactions, chargebacks, refunds etc. as they cost time and money. To save on both, our sophisticated “Risk Engine” identifies suspicious transactions in real time and mitigates payment risks and fraud. In addition to the basic checks (“refund”, “chargebacks”, “friendly fraud”, “money laundering”, etc.), individual “Risk Rules” can be created with user-defined parameters (e.g. time of the completed transaction, country the transaction takes place, transaction amount, payment method, etc.). They identify and monitor suspicious transactions. These transaction checks can be approved either automatically or manually by an authorized risk manager.

Another valuable feature within our Risk Engine is the “Risk Score Card”. It determines different “Score Areas” and the actions that should be triggered, based on the results of the “Score Factor” such as transaction approval, manual review, decline, or alarm notifications. Once a Risk Profile is set, the customer receives a total score, based on the different scores.

In addition, there are automated black- and whitelists which are based on risk-check results. Merchants have the possibility to administer these lists within their gateway interface. To give an example, a suspiciously high number of transactions from a specific country or IP address might be a reason to block those operations completely or only allow trusted exceptions. The highest security standards are a must-have for a successful eCommerce business. Thus, we guarantee our clients safety for each transaction. IXOPAY is PCI-DSS Level 1 certified and able to store credit card data in a secure environment and completely independent from the payment processors. Since on-demand payments (where end-customers need to provide their credit card number only once) are becoming more and more popular, the platform provides a higher conversion rate and improves customer loyalty.

 

(IXOPAY Payment Gateway – Risk Management Engine)

What do you think is the most important emerging new tech solution for merchants to look out for?

Naturally, Blockchain applications and Cryptocurrencies on the payment method side of things and AI on the fraud prevention side are all the rage these days, but as we all know, buzzwords can be exchanged quickly, especially in the payment space. At IXOPAY, we believe, that maximum flexibility is the path to success, that’s why we’ve invested in a modern, modular architecture with minimal PCI scope, allowing us to integrate new adapters and payment methods significantly faster than our competitors and to expand our internal Risk Engine with new third party services as they become available.


About Rene Siegl:

Rene Siegl sold his first hosting company when he was 20 years old and has been in the business of successfully optimizing and developing large-scale projects ever since. Before refocusing on the high-end IT and payment market, Rene put his entrepreneurial mindset to good use in various other business areas, thereby establishing a strong network of associates around the globe, particularly in Asia and the United States, and gaining valuable insights. This understanding enables him now, as Founder of the IXOLIT Group, to effectively advise his clients in business development and strategy issues while maintaining a technical perspective on things.

About IXOPAY:

Being part of the IXOLIT Group, IXOPAY GmbH has created its gateway to ease typical payment processing pain points for both Enterprise Merchants and PSPs/ISOs. The modern, easily expandable architecture provides intelligent Routing & Cascading functions for the former, as well as state-of-the-art Risk and Reconciliation Engines for the latter.

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