Many ‘instant’ payments still face delayed settlement. Merchants need visibility and certainty: Mozarto’s platform delivers both via API and webhook.
Payments have become increasingly instant for consumers, and payment responses are often made instantly, directly via their bank account (certainly in the case of both card payments, Apple Pay, Google Pay and open banking transactions). Often, bank account providers provide instant confirmation directly to the bank account holder or the respective cardholder.
However, this is not a true reflection of the actual speed of the respective payment scheme or receipt of funds via the processing merchant’s account/balance, as the reconciliation process is typically delayed upon receipt of such funds. Notably, with the payment schemes that support ‘instant’ transactions, they often cannot immediately guarantee funds or settlement to the merchant account via the PSP (payment service provider), or worse, the PSP is unable to communicate this effectively to the end merchant.
Typically, only when a payment has been confirmed and communicated to the PSP and receipt of funds has been settled to them (and vice versa, the merchant balance/account), can you truly mark a payment as ‘Settled’. This can cause enormous problems for merchants, notably the following:
- It makes instant and faster fulfilment times more difficult should a payment be authorised yet not settled. Leading to additional operational costs.
- In the digital world, services can typically be instantly provided, but then need to be manually de-authorised or balances manually adjusted/debited. Leading to more ‘human hours’ spent in making corrections and adjustments.
- Additional human resources are required to manage multiple PSPs and ensure best practices, often leading to a ballooning ‘cost’ of payment that does not reflect the fees they are paying to accept such payments.
- Additional risk, which could otherwise be avoided, should settlement of funds be guaranteed and confirmed via API callback or webhook.
- Upset customers, who are not used to waiting for their respective service or product to be delivered within a suitable time frame.
Such problems have existed for years in the online payment world, and merchants are constantly struggling to ensure a delicate balance between the overall management of their PSP partners and limiting some of the above failures or friction points with their customers.
This is why Mozarto has worked hard with both customers and merchants to ensure that this is delivered via our platform. Not only do we confirm the authorisation status (initial payment confirmation), but we also provide the settlement status (where provided via the PSP partner and always integrated when offered) via our dynamic API and webhook.
Wondering if the recently made payment will settle or not is now a question of the past with Mozarto’s intelligent payment orchestration platform.
