iovation is announcing a new partnership with Failsafe Payments, a leading merchant service provider that connects online merchants with worldwide banks, payment processors, shopping carts, and e-commerce payment alternatives.

I recently sat down with Failsafe’s chief operating officer, Patrick Sallnert, to discuss some of the top online payment challenges facing today’s merchants, its integrated e-commerce platform, Certo Payment Gateway, and how our partnership will help provide safe and secure online payment services for merchant customers.

Max Anhoury: We are very excited to be partnered with Failsafe Payments and your Certo Payment Gateway. Would you please tell our readers about Failsafe Payments and how it got started?

Patrick Sallnert: Failsafe Payments was created in 2007 as a regular billing company by a very experienced team within e-payments. Our goal early on was to make it easy for merchants to find suitable billing solutions along with an easy API or payment page integration along with excellent customer support. In 2008, we established Failsafe Payments North America with an office in Cleveland, Ohio, and it was around this time I started to think about the product that would later become Certo Payment Gateway.

MA: What do you see as the major payment challenges facing online merchants today?

PS: I am glad you asked that question as this was exactly the reason for creating the Certo Payment Gateway. There are so many alternative payment brands, services and solutions out there that it’s difficult for merchants to keep track of them. Enabling these solutions requires a lot technical expertise for all the integrations. We have done all that for them, and make it affordable by not including any ridiculous set-up or monthly fees. We charge a per transaction fee. That’s it. Merchants can pick and choose the solution right for them, and we help them with the paperwork towards each partner and service they want to enable. The more payment methods a merchant can offer, local or international, smaller brands and bigger brands, the more sales and conversions they will experience. We will also integrate MSPs, banks and shopping carts.

MA: The Certo Payment Gateway is quite complex. Would you explain how it works, who uses it, and how you intend to offer iovation towards your customers?

PS: Certo Payment Gateway is extremely complex, but not for the intended customers. The customers we are targeting are merchants that want to sell their goods or services locally and internationally. We also offer a white labeled solution for MSPs. That, too, without the set-up fees others are charging. We were even quoted a $50,000 USD set-up fee from one of our competitors. I was flabbergasted to say the least.

iovation’s solution will be offered to our merchants that use our payment page integration. We simply enable it when the merchant wants us to. We have customized iovation ReputationManager so the merchant does not have to think about any other aspects than their core business, which is selling their goods or services and maximizing profits.

MA: Mitigating risk in online transactions is something both of our companies are very familiar with. Can you tell us why you chose the fraud protection partners that you did, and the benefits that will be passed on to your merchants?

PS: We have our own MPI software for 3-D Secure transactions that we can enable for any merchant that wants to process with 3-D Secure, as long as the acquiring bank supports it. Basically, we chose the top providers of different kind of fraud screening to pass on the possibility to choose the best ones for that particular merchant and their types of goods or services. Of course, merchants can enable several for comprehensive, multi-layered approach. iovation’s device reputation service is a perfect fit in our portfolio of integrated partners. Our merchants can enable fraud screening solutions immediately, without doing all the technical integrations and tweaking. In that sense, we’ve done the work for them.

MA: Thanks Patrick.  We are very excited about teaming up with Failsafe Payments, and look forward to helping provide your online merchants with solutions that improve their business and mitigate risk of online payment fraud.

For more information on Failsafe Payments, visit failsafepayments.com.

Tags: e-payments, Failsafe Payments, iovation, merchant service provider, MSP, online merchants, online payments, online retailers

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 16th, 2010 at 4:59 pm and is filed under Financial Services, Holiday Fraud, Online Retail. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.