The term white label refers to a product made by one company that is designed to be used by another company under their own branding. White label products are sold without branding and the purchaser adds their own corporate identity to the product when presenting it to their customers.

 

The concept of white labeling is not new and has been around in the physical world for a very long time, in products ranging from cookies to nail polish to car parts. And in recent times online merchants have started to realise the value to be had in using white label software services for their online presence. 

 

The value, of course, is in keeping your brand front and center in the mind of your customer.

 

All businesses consist of various parts, and all of those parts need products or services to help them function. You need telephones so you use a telecoms provider. You need to invoice so you use accounting software. You need to deliver goods so you use a delivery service. You need all these things and more for your business to function, and there is no way that you can build everything you need to run your business yourself. So you use great vendors who specialise in what they do and can give you a great product or service. 

 

This is all very well and good behind the scenes, but when it comes to the parts of your business that your customers see it’s very important that your brand is easily identifiable and is diluted as little as possible.

 

Online retailing requires some specialist technologies, in the form of website development, hosting services, and of course payment services. For most merchants, all of these services need to be outsourced. 

 

When it comes to payment services, technology and security are specialised and ever-evolving. In a typical online payment scenario, the customer adds their desired products or services to their virtual shopping cart, and then when they are finished and ready to pay they then go through the checkout process. At this point, the merchant website hands the customer over to the payment gateway [link to https://www.baerscrest.com/about-payment-gateways/] system, where the transaction is securely processed and authenticated, and once the payment process is complete the customer is then handed back to the merchant’s website. During this process, the entire look of the website changes to that of the payment service provider, with a different logo, colour scheme, and even fonts. Many customers find this disconcerting, especially customers who are not particularly tech-savvy. There is a high level of abandonment at this point, as the customer may be concerned that now everything looks different and may think that they have been hacked or that their card information is being stolen. Even in a legitimate situation, if a customer is at all unsure they will abandon the process of purchasing. And they may not return to the merchants’ site again, thinking it is an unsafe website. So the merchant has lost a sale and also the trust of that customer.

 

White label payment platforms are an ideal solution for this problem, as even though the customer is being sent to a different website to make the payment, everything looks similar to the website of the merchant. This makes your process appear more streamlined and reliable, keeps your brand at the core of the experience, improves customer trust and can reduce instances of abandonment.

 

So what should merchants be looking for when partnering with a white label payment platform?

 

Fees

What does it cost? There are multiple pricing models and it is important to know exactly what you will be paying for a service such as this. The vendor may charge a flat rate, a percentage on transactions, monthly subscriptions, or a combination of these. You should expect onboarding and/or setup fees as well. Interrogate your provider on any hidden fees that are not immediately disclosed, for example, are fraud prevention tools included in the cost? Are there any penalties? Is the plan pay-as-you-go, month-to-month, or are you tied into a contract? Go for a provider that is transparent in their pricing information. 

 

Security

Choose a provider who uses excellent and up-to-date security technology. Your provider should also be fully PCI DSS [link to https://www.baerscrest.com/what-is-pci-dss/] compliant, as well as compliant with any local legislation. 

 

Support for the transactions you need

Does the vendor offer the services that you actually need? For example, if you sell worldwide you need support for multiple currencies. If you sell subscription-based products or services, does the service support recurring payments?  

 

Customer and tech support

Is the vendor easily contactable and there when you need help? Do they have a great knowledge base for you to call on if you need it? Do they have clear and up-to-date documentation on their APIs? 

 

Backend and reporting

If you are in the business of selling you need to know what is going on with your sales at all times. Find out if the vendor supplies easily accessible reporting facilities, and how often they are updated. 

 

Compatibility

It is of course really important that the service provided to you is compatible with the tech stack on your website. If you use a Magneto shopping cart on your website it is no use if the vendor cannot interface with that system. 

 

Responsibility

It is very important to know who is responsible for what. It can be very disconcerting for a business setting up an online shop for the first time to discover that they now need to pay their website developer additional fees, because they did not realise that a vendor would only do a certain scope of work, and that other parts of the integration would need to be supplied by themselves.

 

Termination

And finally, it is very important to know what happens when the relationship ends, either amicably or in the case of the vendor terminating their services to you for whatever reason, such as an unacceptably high rate of chargebacks. 

 

At Baers Crest we can provide a simple to use and highly secure white label payment platform to our valued clients, with painless onboarding and excellent support. Talk to us  about the best plan for your business.