Whether you’re processing a few thousand or ten million transactions, merchants face one common challenge – credit card fees. With interchange being the cause for nearly 80% of all fees, organizations are constantly looking for opportunities to save money.

In this post, we’ll examine how payment analytics software like Harmonize can simplify and optimize your payment processes. We’ll see how 5 merchants have used the features of our payments analytics tool and the expertise of our consultants to:

Automate their payment processes
Negotiate and reduce their credit card fees
Improve authorization rates
Streamline their back-office operations
Reduce costs and payroll expenses
Improve the customer experience

Each of the companies you’ll read about was able to use our payment analytics software to improve their bottom line and grow their business.

Features of Harmonize, our payment analytics software: What merchants love most

Before we explore examples of how merchants use our payment analytics software, let’s take a quick look at a few of the features that Optimized Payment’s customers love:

Dashboards
One of the most challenging aspects of optimizing your payment strategy is consolidating and making sense of your data. Many merchants are receiving data from multiple vendors and are attempting to use spreadsheets to analyze it.

Our dashboards empower payments teams to access transaction-level analysis when you need it. They streamline and visualize complex payment data into clear, actionable insights, to help you make quick, data-driven decisions.

Reporting
Our reports provide the insights and data you need to support your payment optimization decisions and develop a proactive strategy that keeps you ahead of challenges. Reports can be scheduled and automatically generated on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis to track the performance metrics that matter to you most routinely.

Benchmarking
Easily validate whether the network fees you’re being charged align with published rates—and ensure that you’re not being overbilled by your processor. Our platform enables you to benchmark your acquiring fees against your peers and get insights that can be used in your next negotiation. You can even set alerts for meeting volume commitments on acquiring and network incentives/performance thresholds.

Notifications
Customize email notifications to stay on top of the data that matters to you most. In Harmonize, you can set daily, weekly, or monthly alerts for key metrics that affect your bottom line. For example, you can get an alert if your downgrades exceed 2% of total sales or the number of chargebacks goes over 20 in a single.

Partnership
Most importantly, our team of consultants acts as an extension of your payments team. Unlike other payment consulting firms, we are true partners in your journey towards optimization. We not only provide you with the tools to help identify opportunities for savings and optimization, but assist you in the implementation.

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Chicago Parking Meters Saves Over $1.7M in Transaction Fees

Chicago Parking Meters (CPM) is the third largest parking system in the U.S. with over 36,000 metered on-street parking spaces. When the company first started the majority of their meters only accepted cash, processing a few hundred thousand dollars a month.

But once they started replacing their outdated meters with ones that accepted credit cards, they saw a significant spike in transactions, processing nearly one million transactions per month.

Understanding payment processors and the differences in fee structures became a priority, leading CPM to recognize the importance of partnering with experts

Optimized Payments worked with CPM during their evaluation of vendors, and provided RFP guidance including fee assessments, agreement negotiation, and setup. We also used our payments analytics platform, Harmonize, to gather and visualize their card processing data which led to $1.7M in savings in their first year partnering with us.

For the full story, check out this post: Chicago Parking Meters Saves Over $1.7M in Transaction Fees

Managing Card Payment Costs: Burr Pilger Mayer

Burr Pilger Mayer is one of the largest California-based accounting and consulting firms, serving the Bay Area’s businesses and high-net-worth individuals for the past 30 years.

Over the last two decades, they have grown exponentially, but success came with a cost. As their card transactions increased so did their card processing fees. By the time they reached out to us they were paying hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, with an effective cost of card payments of more than 3%.

After partnering with Optimized Payments, we were able to identify several opportunities for savings and provide recommendations for savings within three weeks, reducing card processing costs by 21%.

For the full story, check out this post: https://optimizedpayments.com/resources/case-studies/burr-pilger-mayer/

Significant Cost Savings for a Leading Healthcare Payment Facilitator

This client is one of the largest Healthcare payment facilitators, serving thousands of hospitals and clinics. They have a vast network of sub-merchants, that limited visibility into the costs associated with their healthcare clients.

Before working with us, our client relied heavily on their processors’ outdated existing reporting that lacked visibility into potential cost-saving opportunities. They also had a fragmented data approach, hindering their ability to monitor trends, review their performance, and make data-driven decisions.

They came to Optimized Payments, and we began their optimization journey with a thorough payments audit to identify potential areas to reduce costs. Acting as an extension of their payments team, we prioritized each project based on ease of implementation and worked with them through the execution.

Our consultants were able to help them save over $2 million annually, significantly reducing their operational expenses and improving their bottom line.

For the full story, check out this post: https://optimizedpayments.com/resources/case-studies/driving-significant-cost-savings-for-a-leading-healthcare-payment-facilitator/

Environmental Solutions Company Reduces Cost of Payments by 20%

A large environmental solutions company that processes over $2 billion in card payments sought out help in optimizing their payment processes.

They initially reached out to us for a Payment Cost Optimization project, however, after auditing 2 years of their processing data, our consultants found that there were significant interchange and processing fee savings opportunities.

Our client also didn’t have the best tokenization product and wasn’t receiving the best service and support.

We partnered with them to implement an RFP for merchant services, which resulted in us identifying what products and services were needed to improve their payments strategy. We guided them in the evaluation of several processors, including reviewing the proposals and giving them recommendations to make the best choice.

With our partnership and guidance, the client was able to migrate to a new acquirer, reduce cost of payments by over 20% and streamline their payment operations.

For the full story, check out this post: https://optimizedpayments.com/resources/case-studies/environmental-solutions-company/

Large Financial Firm Sees Massive Gains in Revenue

One of the largest financial media firms in North America, who has been providing financial insights and guidance for millions of people for years reached out for our expertise.

While they’re known for their free market new articles, their revenue comes from the sale of and renewal of subscriptions to their financial insight services.

Like most organizations with a subscription-based pricing model, customer retention was their biggest challenge. Once they realized their retention rate was declining by 30% they knew they needed a partner to help them execute a strategy that would result in profitability while reducing involuntary churn.

Our team of consultants immediately found a few areas for improvement by sharing specific insights from top issuers and optimizing the configuration of the account updater. Within a few months, we were able to help them realize a 70% increase in approval rates, which led to an incremental $1,000,000 in retention revenue per week.

For the full story, check out this post: https://optimizedpayments.com/resources/case-studies/large-financial-firm-sees-massive-gains-in-revenue/

Mid-Sized Insurance Company Renegotiates Its Way to $700K in Annual Savings & Centralizes Its Payments Data

We collaborated with a mid-sized insurance company that was new to accepting credit cards, initially offering only one-time payments to customers. As demand for credit card payments grew, they introduced a recurring bill pay option, resulting in a significant increase in credit card transactions and fees.

After a decade of an upward trend in credit cards, they recognized that they were paying a substantial amount in fees but weren’t sure which fees were negotiable or if anything could be done to reduce their interchange fees.

Optimized Payments thoroughly audited the company’s payment processing contracts, historical data, and business processes. We also helped them renegotiate contracts and created an easy-to-use dashboard to help their team make sense of their payment data.

For the full story, check out this post: https://optimizedpayments.com/resources/case-studies/mid-sized-insurance-company-renegotiates-its-way-to-700k-in-annual-savings-centralizes-its-payments-data/

Interested in identifying potential cost-saving opportunities or getting guidance in optimizing your payments strategy? Streamline, consolidate, visualize, and optimize your payments data with Harmonize.

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Payment Analytics Software for Merchants: How Interchange Optimization Helped 5 Organizations Save Money