13
Alternative
payment methods
Tricia Lines Hill of First Atlantic Commerce believes payment companies need to diversify
and accept many forms of online payments to succeed in today's anti-fraud environment
Tricia Lines Hill
is vice-president,
Marketing &
Corporate Com-
munications, at First
Atlantic Commerce
(FAC), a Bermuda-
based, international
payment solutions
provider. She has
more than 15 years'
experience in global
marketing and com-
munications and
is responsible for
FAC's marketing and
customer acquisi-
tion efforts.
movers and shakers are offering sideline activities so
as not to lose their already acquired customers (that
want to play a different game) to other operators.
Likewise, payment gateways, which in their sim-
plest form used to be the switch between the mer-
chants and the banks for credit card processing, are
now offering other forms of online payment to satisfy
their customers. Those that differentiate themselves
will gain market share and continue to lead the online
payment space, while those that stick to credit card
processing only will surely fall behind.
Apart from secure and reliable credit card process-
ing, the leaders are providing other forms of payment
through their platform such as debit card processing,
PayPal, virtual cash in the form of Ukash and/or Pay-
safecard, inbound bank transfers and payout solutions
such as cheque and bank transfer issuing services and
prepaid cards.
The top payment solution providers also facilitate
the set up of your merchant account(s) with the bank(s)
and provide premium fraud-management tools and
data with which to protect your business from fraud.
Embracing alternative online payment methods
We have seen robust growth in alternative online pay-
ment solutions for all online merchants in the past
decade, and the alternative payment market continues
to grow its share of the acquiring business.
Interestingly, just a decade ago, analysts and mer-
chants did not hold up much hope for the alternative
payment indu