Braintree: A Payments Solution You Can’t Live Without

 

For those who searched in Google for payments solutions for your business, then you’ve earned yourself a pat on the back because you’re on the right track if you found Braintree. Or, maybe you’re just lucky. Braintree is one of the greatest-kept secrets for business payments solutions (not sure why it would be kept secret, though).

They not only have a fantastic platform to tailor payments for a business, no matter what kind of structure or website you have, but they give you the ability to accept pretty much any payment type under the sun without paying separate fees for each type.

By any metric, it’s fair to say that Braintree is most likely the best option you will find for payments services. Of course, you should do your own research, but there’s not much chance that you’re going to find a provider that offers more than they do.

 

The Best Payments Solution You Didn’t Know About

 

They will work with you and your developers to build your back end, do it with little hassle, and offer you more options at lower cost than you’ll find just about anywhere else.

When you’re building a site that will need to accept online payments, or upgrading your site to improve payments, it will obviously be important to you that it is structured just the way you need it and to function flawlessly.

Every business is different, so it’s not always easy to create a seamless purchasing experience for your customers, who will want to pay with different methods and expect it to move fast and assure them of secure payment.

Braintree is an exceptional tool to accomplish just that. The funny thing is that you probably haven’t heard of Braintree unless you were actively looking for them.

They don’t do much advertising to speak of, but they essentially provide the tools you need to make the payments section of your business’ site work perfectly, no matter what setup you have. Braintree is kind of under the radar, but once you find them, you won’t go back to any other.

 

Reduce Friction at Checkout

 

In their own words, Braintree promises to, “reduce friction at checkout”, and they can truly back that up. So, the main source of friction at checkout that a customer will encounter is when they are unable to pay for reasons which are out of their control, such as when your site doesn’t accept the payment method they want to use.

And there’s the friction. If that happens, the customer then has a couple of options, none of which are favorable because they couldn’t just pay and go. Their first option will be to use an alternative payment method which could turn out to be an inconvenience to them or not even possible for that particular customer.

Another option for them will be to contact you via support channels. You probably won’t respond to their inquiry quickly enough, so unless they really need whatever you’re selling and can’t get it anywhere else, you’re going to lose their business, at least for that purchase. All of that is friction.

In general, when someone is ready to buy and is hindered or blocked by anything at all, they will just opt out and won’t tolerate the extra hassle. Braintree enables you to accept just about any payment method that a visitor to your site will want to use, and that’s the primary source of friction at checkout.

Not to put too fine a point on it, wherever the money is coming from, that person should be able to give it to you. They want to give you their money! You’ve already done the hard part; you’ve sold the product. Now, you just have to make it as easy as is humanly possible for them to pay for it.

Even if you have a certain type of business that can only accept limited payment methods such as credit cards, then that should be made crystal clear and extremely simple to pay with any card. Reducing friction in any form is the goal.

In addition to payment methods, you can also let customers pay with fewer clicks, or even only one click. Braintree also has built-in payment security and fraud detection, so your customers can make their online purchase with peace of mind.

 

Facilitate Smooth Operations for a Better Customer Experience

 

Simplicity and speed is the name of the game for the payment experience on your site. Neither you, nor your customers should ever have to even think about payment for more than a few seconds.

Ideally, the transaction should happen very naturally, almost automatically (or fully automatically), as if the customer is walking through a door and barely seeing the door, so to speak.

If they have to deliberate about whether or not they want to buy from you, then that’s one thing; but when they’re completely ready to click and pay, nothing should stand in their way. There shouldn’t be any labor on your end for payments, either.

Using Braintree basically lets you build your site with every tool needed for someone to pay quickly and naturally without any labor. You create the website you want for the business, and Braintree provides the perfect experience for payment when your customers are ready to buy.

On top of that, you can take advantage of their expert staff for reporting and insights to track how payments are being made and what your customers need from you to improve the checkout process.

 

Recurring Billing Features

 

Your payments solution needs to have the ability to handle recurring billing if the business requires payments in regular intervals, such as a monthly-billed service. Braintree manages subscription payments for you, as well as any other type of interval of recurring payments.

If someone just needs to make a few repeat payments for a fixed amount of time, then they got you covered for that, too. You can give subscription customers the ability to instantly upgrade or downgrade their account online at any time, on their own, and their payment amounts will be automatically adjusted.

There’s no need for you to intervene as an admin at any time unless you want to. Braintree makes the upgrade or downgrade action completely automated. It’s also automated to, “set up discounts, add-ons, promotional periods, and rewards”.

Basically, once you put the parameters into the system, you won’t have to think about it because all the recurring payments will be charged automatically, unless you or the customer makes a change to their plan, account, etc. The system can additionally update credit card information as soon as the user updates it. Any payments that are declined are sent to you as a notification right away.

 

Exceptional Data Security & PCI Compliance

 

When it comes to security, Braintree meets industry standard and goes well beyond it. They are not only a validated level 1 PCI DSS compliant service provider, but as they state on their website, they also, “don’t store raw magnetic stripe, card validation code, or PIN block data”.

If that weren’t enough, you also get comprehensive data encryption with their Braintree Vault protective measure for redundant security. Users have to log in for every session, and passwords are, “never stored directly in the database”.

And finally, to ensure absolute security, Braintree constantly monitors user activity and performs various testing to make sure there can never be a breach.

PCI compliance and data security is something that we tend to take for granted and assume that it’s always there, always running to protect our proprietary information and user data, so this may not have even been a chief concern for you in your search for an online payments provider. If you do decide to thoroughly look into it, though, you’ll quickly find that Braintree takes security very seriously.

Braintree really is a gem for small businesses, where it concerns online payments providers. It’s not that they’re a completely unknown provider, but they don’t really need to advertise like many other payments services do, who relentlessly market their brand anywhere they can to cover up the fact that they don’t have the best quality service or the excellent features that you get with Braintree.

Once you start using Braintree for your business’ payments, you won’t want to use any other provider, and that’s that. It just works, and it works for any setup you may need to give your customers a seamless payment experience with as little friction as possible.

 
 

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