Merchants are tired of accidentally becoming payments specialists

Starting your own business can be one of the most fulfilling, empowering, and thrilling career paths a person can pursue. Entrepreneurs set out on an exhilarating journey, stepping into a world of uncertainty as they attempt to turn their passion or the seed of an idea into a living, breathing business. As the old adage goes, “If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.” Many entrepreneurs set out to turn this mantra into their reality… And so you can understand the confusion they feel when 1 year into pursuing their dream, they realize that half their time is being sucked into understanding, receiving, and managing payments– it doesn’t need to be this way.

First, why is this happening

These days if you want to start a business and you would like to accept money as part of the business, 95% of the time you will need to hire and integrate with a payment processor. For some people, the process is very simple– they sign up with an industry-leading payment processor and everything about financial management becomes seamless and easy. However, for far too many businesses, this fairy tale ending is far from their reality through no fault of their own. Leading payment processors regularly freeze and terminate business accounts without prior warning due to reasons that most would find entirely absurd, for example:

Your chargeback rate stays constant but your sales increase and thus your absolute number of chargebacks increased
You experience a spike in sales from something like a limited edition release, flash sales, or other types of promotional events. Many traditional payment processors see this as “volatility” despite it being a common part of many businesses
After months of operating with the processor, building revenue to tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, you hit a processing threshold that requires a review of your account. Through review they deem your entire industry high risk and give you mere days to go find a different processor. These “high risk” industries include travel/leisure, gaming, and fitness (gyms), just to name a few. More on what it means and what you can do if your industry is deemed high risk here

To add insult to injury, more often than not, this process of getting kicked off their platform or having your account frozen is fully automated, often giving the business owner no good way to dispute the issue, explain their situation, or even learn more about what is going on. These businesses grind to a halt and they are left in the dark for what often turns out to be no good reason.

This lack of transparency, lack of certainty, unfair “high risk” classification, and fear of having their business shut down right as the business starts humming is what drives many business owners to alternative payment processors, including shady high-risk processors.

The issue with alternative payment processors today

These alternative processors are not without their own issues. They can be clunky, outdated, difficult to use, and often predatory in terms of dishonest pricing and hidden charges. Even when entrepreneurs find an honest alternative payment processor that they trust, the service is almost never holistic and the entrepreneur is often left doing a lot of additional work– implement 3d secure, find another anti-fraud solution, get your own risk-scoring solution, understand the chargeback process, understand the difference between interchange, transaction discounts, assessments, and much more.

Signing up with an alternative payment processor today is like going to buy a car and getting sold a build kit– you just want something that works but instead you got 1000 car parts that you need to try to piece together before you can drive to work.

And for the folks that don’t want to use an alternative payment processor, and would rather embark on the journey of building their own in-house, they walk a road riddled with countless obstacles– bank due diligence, approval from card networks, regulatory hurdles, and more– all things considered it can take upwards of a year to get through this process with ongoing compliance, monitoring, etc. to deal with in perpetuity. These are the folks that are so fed up with all payment processors that they have decided to become one themself, just to make their business work.

And thus we come back to our passionate entrepreneur, in search of turning something they love into their career, stuck spending half their time (if not more), becoming a payments expert.

A better path forward

At Edge, we believe that high-functioning businesses deserve to have access to transparent, unbiased, and fair payment processing with top tier financial management support. We understand every industry and every business is different– that’s why we take the time upfront to understand your business and what “normal” means to you, rather than using industry as a proxy to determine if your business is high risk or not. If after looking at your business we are unfortunately unable to support you, we will let you know up front– no surprises. If we are experiencing issues with your transactions, we want to talk to you so we can better understand if we need to update how we think about your business.

Our goal is to navigate the complexities and nuances of the system for you in the most transparent, effective, efficient and fair way possible– receiving payments, managing compliance and regulations, disputing chargebacks, safely collecting and utilizing customer data, and shielding you from fraud.

What we’re building is much deeper than a payment processor. We aim to give entrepreneurs peace of mind, making business finances a walk in the park by supporting across all financial aspects of the business.

We are committed to handing back the keys to your business and letting you focus on what you should be– making your dreams come true.

If you’d like to learn how you can get access to Edge, please send us an email at contact@tryedge.io.

For more insights into payment processing solutions and industry updates, be sure to explore the following resources: