The current financial industry requires a modern solution to make the payment process more convenient and faster. The digital world continues moving forward, therefore in many countries, there is a necessity in starting a payment processing company to meet the changing needs.
According to The McKinsey 2022 Global Payments Report, the payments services industry is rapidly growing, uniting banks and technology providers to create similar seamless and convenient digital experiences. For instance, banks are optimizing their core systems and updating their payment infrastructure, largely in response to the continued rise of online payments, open-banking requirements, and cloud technology. In this article, we explore how to start a payment processing company and provide a ready-made solution to launch your product faster and cost-effectively.
There are different payment processing services that finance companies can offer to businesses: payment service provider, payment facilitator, payment gateway, and payment processor. That’s why you have to choose what type of service you want to provide. Some payment processors serve only as gateways while others become acquirer banks and are partners with Visa or Mastercard.
For online payments, MPGS (Mastercard Payment Gateway Service) enables businesses to integrate payment processing into their websites and mobile applications. Customers can pay securely using a variety of payment methods, and businesses can manage their payment transactions through MPGS’s online portal.
Mastercard MPGS is a secure solution for fintech companies looking to improve their payment processing capabilities and stay ahead of the competition. Read our article on Mastercard Payment Gateaway Services Integration, to explore how to revoluzionize your payment business.
Within this spectrum, there are two additional payment options – becoming a payment service provider (PSP) or a payment facilitator. Each of these roles necessitates a registration process and is subject to different regulations, which standardize online payment processing activities.
Payment processing companies act as intermediaries between the parties involved in a transaction, including customers, merchants, banks, and payment networks. They offer a range of services that enable businesses to accept payments from customers and manage their payment operations.
A payment service provider (or PSP) is a third-party company that helps your business with getting digital payments (from credit cards, debit cards, e-wallets, etc). A PSP is responsible for the transaction verification process and helps to accept payments from the customer to the merchants.
A payment facilitator is a service provider for retailers. If you need to process payments online, you can use a merchant account from a payment facilitator. There are two types of retail accounts: PSP and ISO (Independent Sales Organization).
To understand how to start a payment processing company it is essential to clarify the payment processor workflow. At first sight, payment processing is a simple automated set of actions that needs only 3 seconds to be done. In fact, it is a multi-step process that consists of customer authentication, authorizing, and settling the payment. The payment processor manages the credit card transaction, working as the mediator between the merchant and the financial institutions involved.
Source: BlueSnap
Let`s observe the payment processing in more detail.
This is how payment processing works indeed, consisting of many steps to be done. Therefore, it is essential to provide an uninterrupted stable process to prevent any problems with the transaction.
It is important to clarify the key features of a standalone digital app to understand how to become a payment processor A payment processing solution is a reliable service that must have the following features: easy integration, security, convenient transaction processing, detailed reporting, customer and merchant onboarding, payment initiation, and acceptance.
You can start your business by providing a complete stack of online and offline payment acceptance services for merchants using the payment Platform SDK.finance, without having to start from scratch. We offer the software to build a world-class payment service provider business. It serves different types of businesses – from online shops to marketplaces to brick-and-mortar stores.
SDK.finance payment Platform offers such features:
| Feature | SDK.finance fintech Platform |
| Customer onboarding: | Online account creation, document uploading |
| Transactions management: | Transaction history, view details of each transaction, transaction history export, transactions on the map |
| Refunds initiation: | Initiating refund transactions on the customer’s demand |
| Merchant’s digital wallet: | Opening a digital wallet for the merchant’s personal use |
| Payment acceptance: | In-store payments, online payments, tips acceptance, bill payment processing |
| Online POS: | Online POS registration, web-payments acceptance, configurable checkout page |
| Regular payouts: | Receiving settlement amounts to the merchant’s |
| Receipts generation: | Manually, from transaction history, via sending email receipts after the transaction |
| Roles & permissions management: | Individual, merchant, administrator, accountant, compliance manager |
View the demo video of the SDK.finance Platform to see how you can streamline transaction management and guarantee financial compliance using our robust FinTech Platform:
Starting a payment processing business can be a complex process, but we will outline the steps to help you get started.
Building payment processing software from scratch can be a daunting task, as it requires a lot of your resources and may take a few years to complete. You will also need server infrastructure and robust security measures in place, and an expert development team capable of handling a complex fintech project (and plenty of time to implement your project from the ground up).
If you’re into cost- and time-efficiency, using a pre-developed white-label solution might be a more beneficial way to go. It enables you to brand and customize the ready software according to your product needs and seriously accelerate the release. In addition, working with a reliable vendor can help save your team resources, and costs, plus reduce CAPEX.
If you’d like to start earning revenue as soon as possible rather than spending months or years on a from-scratch project, let us guide you through the process of building a payment processing system using SDK.finance Platform as a foundation. With our payment acceptance solution, you can start growing your revenue by providing a complete stack of online and offline payment acceptance services for merchants faster. Read this article to explore how to build a payment solution like Stripe.
This step involves configuring environments, such as development, pre-production, and production, to ensure a smooth and efficient development process. It also involves setting up services that will aid in the deployment, monitoring, and maintenance of your e-wallet platform. By taking the time to configure these components correctly, you’ll create a strong foundation for the success of your e-wallet platform.
SDK.finance infrastructure consists of 3 servers: developers instance (for development and testing of the software); production instance (live operation server with end-users and real operations); pre-production or Sandbox (infrastructure with the same specs as the production instance used for debugs of integrations with third-party components).
Requirements of the instance for production and test environments
System management basically allows you to create certain standards and rules for their behavior as well as to determine main services and functions that will be available for your customers (individuals and merchants).
There are the following use cases within the system management for payment processing business:
Contract management includes creating custom contracts, adding commission rules, editing system settings, and activating provider commissions.
Payment gateway management involves configuring exchange rates and currency management.
Reports and analytics offer the opportunity to generate transaction-based reports, which can be downloaded for further analysis.
Explore our knowledge base to find out more about system management.
This step involves 4 main stages: KYC management, user profile management, user registration, and revision.
User profile management covers registration( by email or by phone number) and profile deactivation. The administrator can also update profile and business details and manage security settings.
KYC management allows you to cover basic compliance processes such as uploading the documents, verifying documents and users, and requesting users’ actions to complete the compliance procedure.
For more sophisticated KYC and AML functionality we can recommend integration with specialized third-party providers.
Watch SDK.finance Platform’s demo video to explore how to manage your users, ensure KYC compliance, and prevent fraud with the robust system back office:
Read our knowledge base to get more details about user management.
Merchants can create, view, update, and delete products using the available functionalities. This module provides merchants with the ability to manage their products’ prices and measure units as well.
Further, the functionality can be extended by allowing users to tag the transactions for merchant products to control their spending. This functionality is not provided on the UI but is fully functional on the backend and covered by APIs. The administrator can update the following use cases:
Check our knowledge base to find out more information about merchant product management.
This module allows merchants to add, view, edit, and delete their POS systems, as well as generate new secret codes to ensure security. It also enables merchants to view a list of their POS systems and access detailed information about each system, including transaction history per each POS.
Additionally, the module allows merchants to edit their POS systems to ensure accurate and up-to-date information is reflected. You can find more information about POS management in our knowledge base.
This functionality includes funds transfer, bill payment, recurring payments setting up, currency exchange, invoicing, and merchant payment services.
Funds transfer
This functionality is available on UI provided out of the box and has the following flow:
Here you can get information about funds transfers, templates, and contract payments.
Accounting plays a critical role in managing the flow of funds and ensuring financial accuracy and transparency for payment processing business. We have pre-implemented a dedicated dashboard for the accountant role which is available out of the box and provides some basic functionality:
Our knowledge base provides you with detailed information about accounting capabilities.
The system offers users the opportunity to generate transaction-based reports, which can be downloaded for further analysis. All data is securely stored in the system’s database, which can be integrated seamlessly with any reporting or monitoring tool.
Users with all roles can view statement reports in the transactions section, but downloading reports is limited to the individual role for security reasons.
In conclusion, the system’s database offers unparalleled integration possibilities with any report engine or analytical tool, providing users with a seamless and customizable reporting experience.
It is difficult to estimate the final cost of starting payment processing vendors because it depends on a number of factors.
The key factors to consider when building payment processing software are listed below.
Using a pre-developed SDK.finance payment acceptance software you can save time and money resources, without starting from scratch. You can start with an affordable subscription-based option or use an on-premise one that comes with the source code license, available for a one-time flat fee.
For the sake of compliance with regulations and security, the central database is hosted on your own server, while the app is deployed using cloud providers like AWS or Azure.
If you want to build a payment processing system, you can choose a ready-made solution, saving your money, and speeding up the market entry process. Nevertheless, even a pre-developed platform is far from being a turnkey solution and requires efforts to adjust it to your particular business needs. In other words, it provides you with a software foundation for starting a payment processing business.
SDK.finance is a shortcut for building a payment processing solution via its software, so reach out to us and let’s talk.
Proud to announce that SDK.finance is the best FinTech startup 2015! Central European Startups Awards has… Read More
On November 10, SDK.finance was presenting demo at Bank Innovation Israel 2015 DEMOvation challenge. Bank Innovation… Read More
Great news! SDK.finance is selected for the €20.000 cash prize pitch competition at Execfintech! After… Read More
On March 8, CTO SDK.finance Pavlo Sidelov and CEO Alex Malyshev were attending one of the… Read More
On March 30, SDK.finance has been selected as a finalist for Red Herring's Top 100 Europe award,… Read More
Money 20/20, the cutting-edge FinTech conference, was held April 4 – 8 in beautiful Copenhagen… Read More