Links Modular Solutions Launches new Integrated Payment Solutions.

New compliance from the Payment Card Industry (PCI) has seen the world of card transactions change for the better and forever. Changes are making their way down under, and the Australian market has been warned. Being compliant is about protecting your business and your customers. It is a means of building customer trust and protecting your business against damaging leaks of confidential customer information.

If you store credit card details on site, the process to becoming PCI compliant is a costly and complex one. For this reason, rises in PCI standards has been a growth in specialised third party debiting groups that relieve the pressure from adhering to the new stringent PCI standards.

Third Party Debiting is Problematic

By using Third Party debiting providers, health and fitness clubs alike essentially hand over control of their customer’s financial information. Whilst this alleviates the pressure of being compliant, it does raise a number of important business concerns.

When using third party debiting providers, control of financial data is relinquished as members must sign contracts with the third party. They become clients of the Third Party provider, not the health club. For obvious reasons, this can be very problematic.

Other than increased transactional costs associated with Third Parties, facilities who wish to change providers or to go to a new operating system may not do so easily. Since members become clients of the third party, the third party holds crucial data that facilities need in order to operate efficiently. Obtaining that information again from members puts strains on facility staff and encumbers the members.

A Refreshing Solution

Links Modular Solutions (Links) has introduced a solution that eliminates heavy and cumbersome reliance on third party providers with exclusive system integration to banking institutions.

Their newest innovation “Integrated Payments” is specifically written to provide seamless two way integration between Links software and club’s nominated bank debiting solutions.

The Integrated Payments solution will enable club managers to conveniently, efficiently, securely manage and reconcile the collection of customer payments from within their Links software with just a click of a button.

How “Integrated Payments” works so effectively…

As the customer membership record is created within Links, their credit cards details are automatically securely entered into the nominated bank’s tokenization process and vaulted with them. The token is then returned and stored in the Links database for use in the billing process.

Links’ Managing Director Nick Ciccarelli affirms this procedure was specifically designed to adhere to PCI guidelines in respect to handling and storing of customer credit card details. It is completely PA-DSS compliant and provides a seamless billing solution that consolidates every aspect of the payment process from beginning to end.

The Result

“Integrated Payments” is a vehicle that can increase cash flow and revenue recovery; provide better customer communication whilst saving time and money. For rejections there is an automated follow up through emails and text messages where member can easily pay anytime online or phone.

The solution’s live updating removes the need to manually update your customers and accounting records, saving a significant amount of time and money while greatly reducing risk of error.

With the increased information being passed back through the seamless integration, Links is also able to provide many reports such as comparison reports and rejection analysis.

Nick Ciccarelli highlights “using Links Integrated Payments solution within your business provides significant time and process savings:

This all adds up to better business” – Nick Ciccarelli.