How To: Use Your Payments Data To Unlock Business Growth
By Tony Braden, Head of Product and Enterprise Solutions at Payrix, Australia
The local payments and FinTech market is fast becoming more competitive, and as integrated payment systems start to become commonplace amongst software providers, companies are looking to identify new and innovative ways to set their service offerings apart from their competitors.
According to Tony Braden, Head of Product at Payrix in Australia, “using and monetising your payment data provides a great layer of extra opportunity,” you can maximise to grow your business and position yourself as a thought leader in your industry.
Braden has over 35 years experience in the finance/tech industry and has worked with a wide variety of businesses and software providers to enable payments for the past 20 years.
He believes utilising payment data is an often overlooked opportunity that could substantially help grow and elevate a business beyond their competition.
So where to find it? According to Tony, the best place to start looking is with your integrated payments provider.
Not only do integrated payment providers help businesses realise time and cost efficiencies through payment processing and integration with your existing business systems, but the amount of data and frequency with which it’s updated can improve your reporting and insights too, Braden says.
“Whether you’ve had a payments platform implemented in your business for some time or you’re thinking of introducing this to your business, accessing your payments data can provide you with the insights you need for stronger decision-making while positioning you as a thought leader with your customers,” he says.
Read on to find out what constitutes payment data and why it’s valuable, how you can access and analyse your payments data, and how you can use this data to drive business growth.
What is payment data, and why is it valuable?
According to Tony, “when used correctly, payment data can be a useful tool to grow your business, help your clients grow their businesses, and get a complete view of how money is moving through your customer’s businesses.”
Payment data is made up of a vast range of key data points that are recorded through the process of making a payment or series of payments, he says, and can include:
- Transaction Payment Data
- Customer Payment Data
- Company Level Payment Data
- High-Level Payments Data/Industry Insights
The more data you have, the more you can model and analyse this data to create valuable insights for your company.
“At Payrix, we handle hundreds of data points and aggregate them into pre-built reports ranging from individual transaction insights to overall company performance,” Braden says.
By analysing this data, you can better understand your customers, provide educated insights, and identify growth areas in their business and broader industry.
Not only will this help you strengthen your payment processing offerings, but it will give you a valuable touchpoint to keep delivering an exceptional customer experience.
What to look out for in your transaction data
Syphoning through payment data can feel intimidating and complex. As Tony points out, there are many data points in every transaction, from payment methods to identifying one-off and returning customers.
To simplify the process and help hone your focus, Tony recommends focussing on a few key data points.
“If you provide payment processing in your SaaS or software business, you should collate and analyse a few key data points to gain the most valuable insights,” he says.
Important payment data points, according to the Head of Product for Payrix in Australia:
- The most popular payment methods, and how these are processed. For example, identifying the amount of POS payments that are made using digital wallets.
- Failure rates and the payment methods and/or channels where this occurs most.
- Chargebacks, including how often these happen and if it’s on specific products and services.
- Changes in frequency of payment types, payment values, or failed transactions to identify trends.
- The average transaction value across the business, plus an indication of peak and off-peak times.
- Cost vs revenue per payment type, to indicate what type gives the best return across your client portfolio.
- The proportion of recurring and one-off customers in the business. In the case of recurring offerings, you can also look at the average time a person remains a customer to better understand the customer journey.
How to access your payments data
There are a few different ways to access your transaction data.
The most common ways are through your integrated payments provider (like Payrix) via API calls, unified data insights such as pre-built reporting dashboards (i.e. within Payrix Portal), and modelling customised reports within your own platform. Here’s how accessing your payments data through three different paths may look, according to Tony:
1. Extract payment data using API or exports
You can access your transaction data using a series of API calls to extract specific datasets.
You can use a variety of API calls to surface this in your own platform or through your accounting, CRM or ERP software, if it’s integrated across your business.
Alternatively, you can export your payments data to an Excel file. This can be a good option if you need access to specific data points or granular details.
Here are some of Payrix’s most popular payment data API calls in their REST documentation here:
To see more examples, you can view the Payrix REST Documentation.
2. Access unified data and pre-built reporting dashboards
If you have already aggregated and set up reporting, you can instantly access and analyse your data from a reporting dashboard.
According to Tony, most payment providers will offer some form of pre-built reporting, with Payrix touting a wide range of reports, ranging from detailed datasets to company-level insights.
Some examples include settlement reports, rejections reports, activity reports and more.
If you are an existing Payrix client, Tony recommends exploring the Partner Portal add-on which lets you access an even wider range of pre-built reports, and useful insights on merchant activity and performance across your entire portfolio.
3. Modelling Data In Your Own Platform
Using the API calls and payment data coming from your Integrated Payments Provider, you can set up your own reporting dashboards and pre-built reports to access the exact data and insights you need, Tony says.
For example, you could combine customer details like age or # of payments with average transaction value to see if there is a correlation in your target audience.
Each method and access point will provide slightly different information, so it’s important you dig into as much information as possible and use the analytics tools available to streamline the process. For example, Payrix includes pre-built reports and API documentation to provide unified data insights to their payment partners.
These dashboards can be used internally to assess your customer’s performance or provide insights, and also with your clients to provide them with immediate insights too, he says.
How to use your payments data for business growth
Once you’ve accessed the transaction data across your business, whether it’s at a high level or on a line-item basis, you can analyse the information to provide your customers with valuable advice. This will position you as a thought leader in your vertical and demonstrate your commitment to helping your customers succeed. As a result, your business growth will accelerate too.
According to Tony, here are some key things you can do with your payment data:
- Help clients reduce chargebacks by identifying where and when this is occurring most and providing education on reducing their exposure to fraud.
- Identify opportunities to improve your platform by looking for customer pain points such as late payments or areas of double data entry and offer steps to address these problems.
- Create in-depth reporting and dashboards to give clients real-time insights.
- Improve the customer experience further by providing a free session to run through their reporting dashboard, emphasising their current strengths and areas for growth.
- Monetise these experiences through providing reporting and dashboard features on a monthly subscription basis or as a value add when you’re securing new customers, allowing you to charge an overall higher rate.
- Educate your customers and provide industry level insights with high-level analysis across all your clients’ activity, product performance, average transaction value and more.
- Use the insights to fuel content for an annual report on your industry, if your sample size is large enough.
Leverage your payments data and grow with Payrix
As Tony points out, there is a treasure trove of information within your payments data.
Analysing it at high and granular levels will give you and your customers the insights required to continue growing.
“Whether you’re looking to improve your technology platform or exploring new ways to add value to your customers, using your payments data to provide rigour and structure for this process is invaluable,” he says.
Would you like to learn more about how you can use your payments data to grow your business? Get in touch today to see how Payrix can transform your business.
