In celebration of Small Business Week and National Small Business Week, MPC sat down with Web Griebel, Senior Director of Online Payment Product at Heartland to discuss how business owners can leverage advanced, automated technologies to delight customers and improve cashflow. Following are interview highlights.
How would you describe payment links and what problems do they solve?
Payment links are secure, mobile friendly URLs that can be sent to customers via email, text or QR code – to easily request and accept a payment. They generally speed collection times for the requesters and are extremely convenient for payers. Their use expanded significantly in recent years, proving to be a versatile contactless option for payments.
What differentiates Heartland’s payment links from other available solutions?
Heartland’s payment links can be deployed in just a few clicks – include a fixed, invoiced or open amount due and offer flexible tender options – including debit / credit / ACH, stored card/ACH or digital wallets such as Apple Pay / Google Pay. They can also post seamlessly to leading accounting packages, such as QuickBooks, Freshbooks and Xero.
What benefits do payment links provide to merchants and customers?
As previously mentioned, payment links are contactless, speed collection cycles, and delight customers with a fast, secure mobile experience. When incorporated into an integrated payment system, payment links vastly improve efficiencies and enhance the customer experience.
On the merchant side, incoming payment links are automatically matched with invoices and accounts receivable, saving time and labor costs by eliminating manual bookkeeping procedures. When linked to POS and accounting systems, payment links will populate ledgers without human intervention, improving accuracy and cash flow – while speeding up the receivables process.
On the consumer side, payment links facilitate single-click remittances, resulting in faster checkouts and a more enjoyable shopping journey.
For merchants and consumers alike, integrated payment systems that use payment links will help minimize mistakes caused by human error and manual data entry. Consolidating these touchpoints into an integrated, PCI-compliant payment system will also protect cardholder data and enhance transaction security from point of entry at the POS to processing host systems.
How do payment links complement Heartland’s technology suite?
As we are keenly focused on customer led solutions, payment links are an important component of how we enable our merchants to focus on running their businesses and not making them conform to legacy, inflexible or potentially unsafe processes.
What are some recent examples or use cases of the solution?
There are many, but a few notable ones are:
- Payment upon receiving a food delivery
- Payment upon completion of a home based service
- Payment of an invoice sent with the link
- Donation to an organization or cause
For more information about Heartland payment links, visit www.heartland.us
BIO
Web Griebel is Senior Director of Online Payments Product at Heartland, a Global Payments Company. An experienced fintech product and business leader who seeks and offers a clear perspective on both the “how” and “why” of digital payments, Griebel focuses on customer-led value creation in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), product strategy and partner development.
