Your commercial activity is carried out remotely, either by telephone or through a merchant site. Whatever your situation, you want a solution to collect your customers by credit card. To do this, you need a distance selling contract which, associated with a payment service provider, allows you to secure the transactions, both for the customer and for the e-merchant. In the latter case, a payment module is set up, allowing your customers to enter their credit card details themselves. Your imperatives being the speed of the implementation of the remote payment system by bank card, its simplicity of use and costs reduced to the maximum, which steps should be considered?

Steps for remote payment by credit card

In order to offer your customers a secure way to pay for their purchases remotely by credit card, you need to obtain a VAD number through a distance selling contract with your bank or financial institution, allowing payment by credit card via a virtual electronic payment terminal.

One of the major challenges for neo-banks will be to provide professionals with real alternatives to the classic operation of merchant contracts. In this period of health crisis, merchants are all the more attentive to new solutions that could allow them to capture more potential customers, and a fortiori to conclude more sales.

Offer to professionals

Some neo-banks have therefore decided to specialize in offers for professionals, as is the case with Olkypay. It is indeed not so simple for an entrepreneur to open a business bank account with a traditional bank. They have to go to a branch with a lot of documents such as the KBIS, proof of address, projects and results forecasts, and so on. Even after this step, he will have to wait longer than those offered by the new banks.

The traditional approach consists in contacting your banking institution and filling in an activity form, in order to obtain a VAD number, which is essential to use a credit card payment solution on your site. Depending on the nature of your activity, the validation of the VAD contract by the banking institution can be fastidious and long. Wishing to minimize the risks as much as possible, the banks ask for guarantees and want to make sure that their customers are in good health before allowing them to use their online payment solutions. They therefore carry out a detailed analysis and it is not uncommon to see entrepreneurs using arguments to convince their banker, although mentalities are currently changing, with remote payment by bank card becoming more and more democratic.

Olkypay is one of the first financial establishments to offer online accounts for professionals, considering that their needs lie in a simple and efficient implementation that involves administrative simplification, particularly concerning the issuance of a VAD contract for remote collections (e.g.: e-commerce site).

Online payment by credit card: how does it work?

Once you have obtained the Distance Selling contract, you have two options:

The first is to install the payment terminal directly on your website. This will allow your customers to enter their credit card data on a form to be transmitted to the bank server through a secure protocol. Once you have obtained the VAD contract, you have two options:

The second solution is to rent the payment terminal to a specialist who provides you with codes to install on the pages of your website. When they enter their credit card details, customers will be invited to do so on a page hosted on the provider's server.

At the time of the transaction, buyers enter their credit card number, its expiration date and the visual cryptogram corresponding to the last three digits on the back of their card. There are also strong and non-replayable authentication systems (solutions called "3D Secure"), which are implemented at the time of payment. These systems reinforce the security of the transaction, such as an SMS code sent to the customer's cell phone or a card reader in the customer's possession.ect

Costs and fees associated with remote payment by credit card

Generally, the installation of a solution allowing the payment by credit card by your customers generates three types of expenses:

Set-up fees, ranging from €100 to €300 on average (e.g. €200 for Banque Populaire's Cyberplus solution, €389 for BNP Paribas' Mercanet)

Monthly subscription fees (ranging from about 15€ to 85€ for the most expensive)

A commission on sales ranging from 0.3 to 1% and a fixed fee per transaction (from 0.10 to 0.80€ per transaction on average)

Reducing costs for companies is one of Olkypay's major development axes and this is why we are committed to clear pricing for useful services in remote sales.