For e-commerce merchants looking to sell globally, Digital River World Payments says its payment program including gateway services (Payments Stream), fully managed merchant account services (Payment Advance) and an innovative outsourced solution (Payment Source) offers merchants secure processing and access to a wide array of locally preferred payment methods.

Payment Lifecycle Management is Digital River World Payments’ holistic approach to online payments that focuses on engagement between a merchant and its customers in addition to processing payments at the lowest cost possible. With an eye on pre- and post-purchase activities in addition to the payment process itself, the company says managing the entire payment lifecycle will increase conversion—directly affecting revenue—and provide ways to increase profitability of an existing payments program by optimizing solutions and partnerships.

By managing the full lifecycle of each payment transaction, merchants have a way to quantify the return on investment payments can have on the overall business.  The company notes payments projects typically are not on top of many merchants’ priority list, but explicit ROI provides a way to get there.

Digital River World Payments has identified and defined five phases of the payment lifecycle, which, when merchants focus on each, will benefit them and their customers in multiple ways:

• Payment Experience: Merchants will provide an optimized customer experience that will address the issues and fears that their consumers might experience. This could mean adding security information or seals on the payment page or reducing the number of required fields to be entered by the consumer.           
• Payment Options: Offer the payment options that are relevant for each merchant’s target audience so that consumers feel safe and secure buying online using their locally known payment option.
• Risk Management: Merchants can apply the security and fraud protection solutions needed to keep consumer data safe and secure at all time.   
• Back Office Services: Access to back office transaction data is available to merchants at all times enabling best-in-class customer support whenever a consumer has a question on their purchase.
• Payouts: Merchants will ensure they have a simple process for customer refunds in the case the consumer whishes to return the product for any reason.

Digital River says it implemented the consultative Payment Lifecycle Management approach a year ago to “change the conversation” with merchants regarding how they view payments and the opportunities they provide for additional revenue. The company says merchants can leverage the data and knowledge it has accumulated as a global pioneer in e-commerce—and a merchant in its own right—to identify ways to improve in each of the lifecycle stages.