When developing e-commerce solutions – especially those which include alternate payment options – you must take steps to validate your customers’ identities. ILD’s iValidation service will not only protect your business from being taken advantage of by e-criminals, but it will also help protect your customers from identity theft and fraud. This is becoming increasingly important, as customers place a large amount of faith in online retailers that their information is being protected from fraudulent activity.

ILD’s iValdiate service uses a multi-step validation system to confirm the identities of your customers:

1. When a customer enters his or her information into your point of sale, the data can be instantly verified and validated.
2. The customer’s billing name, address, and home phone number can be cross referenced with a date of birth or the last 4-digits of the customer’s Social Security number.
3. If the customer has chosen the Bill to Phone payment option, the service can confirm the phone account is active and/or in good standing.
4. Once the information has been validated, you can confirm the customer’s purchase. If the information was found to be incorrect of fraudulent, you can cancel the sale.

ILD’s iValidate service brings obvious benefits to your business. It will keep you from spending valuable time dealing with fraudulent orders, or wasting marketing dollars targeting consumers who won’t end up as conversions. Similarly, it helps bolster your business’ cyber-security. Fraudulent or otherwise invalid e-commerce activity has detrimental effects on both businesses and consumers, and ILD’s validation system measures are a powerful line of defense.

To learn more about ILD’s iValidate service or our other e-commerce solutions, like bill-to-phone, visit our website. If you’re ready to start using the most advanced validation system in the industry, contact us to day for more information on how to sign-up.

Bill to phone technology is poised to revolutionize the way consumers proceed through checkouts when shopping with participating merchants. Offering added convenience to the consumer and allowing retailers to provide more efficient customer service, bill to phone techniques are highly recommended for merchants looking to diversify their payment processing options.

The process itself is fairly simple, beginning with a transaction for a product or service between a merchant and a customer. When the bill to phone option is selected by the customer at the checkout, the merchant then submits the transaction to its payment processing partner. The payment processing partner notifies the consumer’s local exchange carrier (LEC) of the transaction, and the charges appear on the consumer’s next phone bill. When the consumer pays his or her phone bill, the LEC sends payment for the product or service to the payment processing company. From there, the payment is forwarded to the merchant.

While bill to phone payment processing can be used in traditional retail environments, its innovative benefits are clearest in the realm of e-commerce. Advantages of bill to phone checkouts for consumers include:

• Security. Many shoppers are reluctant to provide their credit card information online, and submitting a phone number to a merchant is widely seen as a much safer alternative.
• Ease of use. Bill to phone payment processing is an ideal way to pay for monthly subscriptions (such as dating websites) and pay-per-use services (such as the downloading or streaming of music, movies and/or TV shows from digital distributors).
• Convenience. While most people don’t know their credit card numbers by heart, they do have their phone numbers memorized, making it faster and easier for them to submit payments.

For merchants, the benefits of bill to phone payment processing include:

• Higher conversion rates. The numbers suggest that simple checkouts that offer bill to phone options have higher conversion rates than credit card-based e-commerce billing platforms.
• Less risk. Bill to phone checkouts require no up-front costs or investments, allowing you to save your cash for other areas of business development.
• Diversified payment options. Consumers appreciate alternatives to paying with their credit cards, and studies have shown a link between diversified payment options and higher revenue rates.
• User validation. Bill to phone payments prevent unauthorized transactions from being successfully processed.

At ILD Teleservices, we provide innovative, effective payment processing solutions for both traditional and e-commerce retailers. Through our diverse range of payment processing platforms, we reach over 150 million consumers throughout North America, helping merchants generate growth and providing added convenience and security to consumers. If you would like to learn more about our bill to phone payment processing technologies, please contact a service representative.

Cure the pain that triggers ecommerce cart abandonment

Ouch! No one enjoys pain, whether it’s the physical kind, like a nasty paper cut, or the pain that comes from unpleasant or inconvenient things, like high gas prices. For some ecommerce customers, pain comes in the form of checkout procedures. Here are two pains that might be causing ecommerce clients to check out of your checkout process:

The pain of the keyboard tax

No, it’s not the latest brainchild of misguided politicians. Instead it’s a term used to describe the labor that goes into typing. Life moves at a 24/7 pace that’s packed with work, family, and other activities. A consumer might not be willing to invest the time it takes to dig out a credit card, hunt for any necessary reading glasses, type in that big, long number, double-check it, find and enter the expiration date, and find and enter the security code, which is so small it requires some customers to read it with a magnifying glass.

One way to eliminate the hassle of the keyboard tax is to offer a bill to phone alternative payment option. The checkout experience becomes much smoother because the customer is only required to submit top-of-mind information: name, address, phone number, and the last four digits of their Social Security number. Less time spent wading through the checkout process means a customer has less time to re-think their purchase.

The pain of debt

Many consumers are increasingly aware of the debt they carry—and many are taking steps to reduce it. For nearly two years, consumers have continued to cut back on credit card use, according to the Federal Reserve. Experts say that the drop in credit card use is especially noticeable in the 18 to 24-year-old demographic. By offering a payment solution that adds the purchase to the consumer’s monthly phone bill, you eliminate the pain of debt.

The cure for ecommerce pain

Ecommerce merchants will always need to provide credit card options for clients, but you can ease the pain by also offering bill to phone payment solutions. You might just find that offering alternative payment methods cures your pain, too—the sting of seeing all those abandoned shopping carts.

To eliminate the pain that causes ecommerce consumers to abandon carts mid-checkout, contact the team at ILD, a leader in payment solutions that are simple for consumers and profitable for merchants.

ILD Teleservices | Chipping Away At Chargebacks

Chargebacks hurt ecommerce business. A chargeback is a customer-initiated refund that is enforced by the customer’s bank or credit card issuer. They’re initiated for any number of reasons, including technical issues (non-sufficient funds, processing errors, etc.), quality-related complaints (customer claims the goods/services weren’t as promised), or fraud.

No matter why chargebacks are initiated, the fact is, if you’re an ecommerce merchant, they hurt. The process forces you to reimburse the cardholder and pay pricey fees to the bank. What’s worse, chargeback rates may actually dictate the payment forms you’re allowed to accept from customers. For example, most credit card companies require merchants to keep their chargeback levels below 2%–with some requiring even lower rates. Businesses with higher chargeback rates stand to lose their merchant status.

Ecommerce merchants can reduce chargebacks by implementing best practices, such as providing accurate product descriptions and clearly defining a return policy. There is, however, another tool for reducing costly chargebacks: go alternative.

No, we’re not talking about flannel shirts and grunge rock. Instead we’re talking about adding alternative payment methods, like bill to phone, to the shopping cart process. When customers choose this option during checkout, they simply authorize the merchant to bill the purchase to their monthly phone bill, taking the credit card transaction out of the equation entirely.

But ecommerce merchants can’t stop there. It’s critical to find a bill to phone processor with the ability to provide real-time verification of the customer’s identity and account information. By validating personally identifiable info, such as home phone number and the last four digits of the customer’s Social Security number, you eliminate a higher number of the fraudulent orders and information errors that trigger customer-initiated refunds.

Don’t let chargebacks chip away at the bottom line you work so hard to build. Reduce chargeback rates by talking to the bill to phone payment processing team at ILD.