Freedom of Choice
The Wolf
You have doubtlessly been told that if only you put all your payment transactions into one safe pair of hands behind their own firewall, you are safe. And you probably will be, but you know at what cost: somebody else will be dictating what type of payment processes you can have and what they will cost.
So is there any way you can be compliant without being delivered up to somebody else’s agenda?
After all, you have worked hard to keep down your processing costs; you have seen the arrival of new card programs like Blackhawk and you want to take part; there is maybe a community gift card you want to participate in, or one you might want to launch – or both; a scrip program you want to host; a family card program you want to introduce; or a charge card program built into the lane, that stops you running up a bigger account with delinquent customers; maybe you want to team up with the local c-store so he takes pre-paid cards you issue and where he also becomes your gas discounting outlet, so you can compete in customer loyalty.
Whatever those programs are and what they might be, only one thing is certain, if you are delivered up to the “one safe pair of hands”, those are the hands that shape what you can do, what you can’t do and what you are allowed to pay for it.
There is an alternative, (which, incidentally, can also provide you with all of the above right now!)
The Sheepdog
Here’s how: The best of the competitive offerings will encrypt all EFT transactions so that they flow through your network without you being able to see the card details. Then all those transactions will be whisked off to that service provider’s hosting facility and from there, through their traffic cop software, transactions will be routed to the providers they choose using the provider’s encryption. They can thus boast that transactions cannot be seen in your internal network and after they are processed, they are not stored on your site. Result: safety, but at a cost.
Midax Payment 5000 on the other hand equally encrypts transactions so that they flow through your entire network without you being able to see the card details. However, instead of pulling all those transactions back to the Midax host site for subsequent treatment, Midax sets up its traffic cop software on your in-house server and routes outgoing transactions via a second network direct to your chosen service providers using their encryption. Result: the same safety but with Midax, you get to choose who you want to use to provide whatever services you want.
This is the same software that we have had running in grocery chains across the country – see a list of some of our customers - for the best part of 10 years, so it is a tried and trusted solution. Only now we also offer the same solution in a Midax-hosted environment, so that smaller grocers can also benefit from the same functionality, without the need for infrastructure.
Control and Settlement
Talk to a Midax user and he’ll tell you the switch application puts him back in control of EFT processing. We continue to provide this under Payment 5000 by copying all your transactions onto our own host servers in our own PCI compliant environment. Then we give you secure access to your payment data, so you still have full audit capability.
As new user to Midax, probably the first thing you are going to notice as a Midax Payment 5000 user is that you now have online settlement. The days of trusting the providers and the banks to get it right are behind you. This is a huge area of discrepancy that goes completely undetected, certainly to your cost and equally to your customers’ cost and that, as you know, ends up back on your desk!
You will also be able to determine immediately and online whether a customer’s transaction has gone through or not. No more 1-800-NON-SENSE calls to your provider to find out whether your customer just got screwed or you did (and then still coming up blank!). Midax audits the providers and gives you immediate and detailed proof of each transaction, which you can submit to your provider for correction.
Midax also uses its own business logic to flag for daily verification of any potential provider double-postings so you can verify and correct before your customers notice. Look after you customers, before they come into your store and accuse you!
Third Party Payment Services
As well as offering you free and unrestricted access to the third party provider of your choice for debit, credit and EBT, with Midax Payment 5000, you can also choose your own third party check service, gift card service or house charge card service as you wish.
Midax Payment Services
Bundled into the solution, Midax offers the same facilities we provide to our customers, who have a Midax in-house switch:
Gift Card, which, in turn, allows you to configure ranges of gift cards into family cards, scrip cards, or community cards as you wish. And you can also run these cards in parallel with other third party programs, where you want to participate. Midax differentiates itself from much of the competition by separating transaction types and bin numbers, where our competitors often force all transaction types for a certain type of transaction down one restrictive path.
House Charge Card, with the same freedom of choice of charge card programs from Midax alongside ones from other sources
Check Authorization, with velocity rules and approval logic that you determine or an interface to an external program, where check decline and approval is decided in a third party’s database.
BOC with Tranfusion and bad check collection services associated with that.
Midax also offers in-lane Blackhawk processing with the Payment 5000 solution for ACS, IBM ACE and SA, Scanmaster, ISS45 (7 and 8) and ACR. No stand beside gymnastics, but fully integrated into the lane.
In brief, then, Midax Payment 5000 offers a PCI compliant solution with a range of fully integrated payment methods that nobody else offers. But even more importantly, it offers them in a way that you can expand upon as you choose.
Freedom of choice!
