The Importance of Payment Data for Your Business

Payment data is a key driver of business efficiency. Businesses need payment system data that offers insights into customers’ behavior and allows them to pinpoint any problems in their payment process. With access to this actionable data, they can monitor and adjust their payment systems to make improvements and gain a competitive advantage. However, disparate, pieced-together or siloed systems can cause limited visibility into data. To have access to the full breadth of customer data, businesses need a payment solutions provider that can deliver payment system data that is integrated, transparent, and organized.

As a payments orchestration provider, OLS can consolidate data across an ever-expanding set of payment types and channels, including a wide range of specialized payment services, all in a secure environment. By unifying this data, OLS can provide businesses access to the full breadth of available payment data. OLS can simplify and streamline payment processing by unifying various systems, including reconciliation, settlements, and reporting, under one flexible, efficient, and cost-effective solution.

What insights can payment data uncover?
Payment data helps businesses see the big picture when it comes to payment activities, from being able to identify transaction issues to detecting fraud. Payment system data also provides insights into individual transactions, linking transaction data and allowing a business to see the entire customer journey.

The Payment Data Merchants Need to Know

Payment acceptance costs are rising for U.S. businesses, with analysis from CMPSI suggesting that the average price of payment processing for U.S. merchants will have doubled between 2009 and 2025. Yet, despite these rising fees, many businesses find that they are without access to the payment system data they need for their businesses. Businesses need end-to-end transaction details that can provide them with all the information related to the payment.

While there is a wealth of data that is collected regarding each transaction, there are four parts that businesses are generally most concerned with:

1. Inbound: payment is generated
2. Authorization: authorized payments are sent to the payment processor to get approval
3. Response: response, approval, or denial from the payment processor
4. Reply: relaying that response back to the payment originator

Businesses need a partner to help them aggregate the key points of all four parts of each transaction, plus metadata about the transaction itself. Companies also need a payments partner who can link related transaction data together, whether connecting a reversal to the original transaction or linking multi-part transactions.

For example, at a gas station where there is a pre-authorization amount and then the actual transaction, or hold for an online grocery order that is finalized when the order is picked up. OLS works to aggregate data about the various parts of a transaction and delivers that data in near real-time.

Payment Data Delivered the Way You Want

To paraphrase Henry Ford, “you can have any color as long as it’s black.” Some payment partners may only offer to deliver data reports in one way. At OLS, we know that for the greatest benefit, businesses need that data securely delivered in the most convenient way to consume. That might include:

• APIs created by either OLS or the merchant
• Indexing the data and sending it to Splunk
• Using Intraday extract produces files and pushing out on SFTP

Data from these reports could also be exported and loaded into other tools, allowing businesses to utilize the data in the most beneficial manner.

At OLS, we don’t want to be the arbiters of what the data should look like. Recognizing the significance of what clear visibility into the payments ecosystem could mean for businesses, OLS knows that payment system data reporting should not be a one-size fits all solution. Rather, each company will have its preferred way to consume data, so we take the time to talk to a retailer about the best way to consume their payment data.

Payment Data Requires Powerful Transaction Security

Security is paramount when it comes to data, which is why data needs to be organized in a highly aggregated and anonymized way to comply with privacy standards. OLS can help protect and secure cardholder data and personally identifiable information in your payment system, ensuring that cardholder data is never captured or transmitted within the systems in a human-readable format.

At OLS, we understand that payment system data gives businesses insight into what’s happening inside their payment systems. We believe receiving and processing payment data shouldn’t be so complicated, time-consuming, and expensive. Contact us today to learn how OLS Payments can help you increase your access to data and uncover insights with the potential to drive business growth.

Key Takeaways

• Businesses need data that offers insights into customers’ behavior and allows them to pinpoint any problems in their payment process.
• OLS can consolidate data across an ever-expanding set of payment types and channels.
• OLS works to aggregate data about the various parts of a transaction and delivers that data in near real-time.
• Payment system data helps businesses see the big picture when it comes to payment activities, from being able to identify transaction issues to detecting fraud.