Payments processing is about as commoditized an offering as it gets. Add in the fact that the payments processing industry has zero organic growth, and merchants can quickly become the proverbial whipping boy to help a processor meet their quarterly projections. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The sad part?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Merchants don\u2019t even know they\u2019re being whipped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ah, the beauty of hidden payment fees. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Which is why we\u2019re generally not fans of payment processors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Before we get into specifics, here\u2019s a decent litmus test every merchant should apply.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Are you processing directly with a large, public processor<\/a>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n When was the last time you audited your statements?<\/p>\n\n\n\n If your answer is yes, and more than six months ago, you\u2019re probably getting screwed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As Aben<\/a> has been helping larger merchants generate more sales by leveraging data from the card networks on top of data from payment processors, two things became increasingly obvious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n First, nearly every merchant is being fleeced on payments. See above for rationale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Second, payment processors are charging merchants for access to their own<\/em> payment token data. As some merchants have realized the need to leverage card data to track unknown customers, processors will often charge $20 (see here<\/a>) to $25 (see here<\/a>) per month per location to \u201cenable\u201d access to the data.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you have a few hundred locations, these costs can get pretty steep pretty fast: for every 100 stores we\u2019re talking about an extra $30,000 at a minimum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Global Payments, for a specific example, quoted a sub 1,000-unit merchant $300,000 a year<\/strong> to access their token\/PAN data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yea….<\/p>\n\n\n\n Well, this wasn\u2019t workable for Aben customers for a ton of reasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Enter ParPay<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fresh off a payfac that leverages Infinicept\u2019s<\/a> technology with full token ownership, ParPay<\/a> promised to (wait for it\u2026) adhere to their processing contract<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Just as importantly as far as we\u2019re concerned, ParPay has been protecting payment data integrity with Aben<\/a>, enabling marketing, finance, and operations teams to track business progress through Aben<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n See here for a notable example<\/a> of what\u2019s possible when you create tangible ROI with data. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Which is why we\u2019re announcing Aben\u2019s partnership with PAR.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Savneet Singh, PAR\u2019s CEO, said: \u201cAben has been instrumental in helping our customers understand the value of ParPay by leveraging ParPay data in Aben\u2019s solution. Together we\u2019re generating positive ROI for our customers and clearly demonstrating the value operators can achieve when they choose the right partners.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tammy Billings, Aben Co-founder and Head of Restaurants, said: \u201cRestaurant marketers are finally starting to care about the highly valuable piece of data that comes from processors but they still have a challenge in getting to it, and often times it\u2019s only available a go-forward basis, so time is of the essence. \u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n How do we do it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Well, Aben is the only<\/em> entity that has a legitimate claim to the payment processing data. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n In mashing up the local payment tokens with the payments data we get from the card networks, Aben can identify, target, and prove 1-1 marketing attribution across digital platforms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Really.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But we\u2019re not here to self-aggrandize.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Instead, we\u2019re here to let the industry know that data science + big data is teaming up to produce tangible ROI, with a bullseye on recalcitrant payment providers that refuse to share the necessary data to help their customers succeed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And because Aben\u2019s been built with an insane volume of proprietary data from direct card network partnerships and item level data from POS partners like PAR, it\u2019s incredibly defensible, and will undeniably change the way merchants allocate capital. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Marketing. Finance. Operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the end of the day the logic is inescapable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n You can’t continue to be a payments bro.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And if you need help, drop us a line<\/a>.<\/p>\n