The payment switch app development is one of the fastest-growing technologies around the world. Businesses and enterprises are increasingly realizing the potential of payment integration services and digital apps. The fintech market is witnessing significant growth because of the high demand for development of this sort.
This is not limited to mobile payment apps and wallets. The development of payment switch applications covers a wide range of services, like working as a unified way to process transactions. Retailers, small and medium businesses (SMBs), and merchants are using these apps to develop redundancies, expand their network, and route the transactions more efficiently.
What is Payment Switching?
Payment switching is the process of routing the payment transactions dynamically between different Payment Service Providers (PSPs) and acquirers. It works as a communication channel between multiple payment service providers using merchant-driven rules, authorization, and transaction routing concepts.
A payment switch application works as a centralized system for payment processing. It integrates programs and systems that can acquire, route, switch, and authenticate online payments across multiple services. It also helps in extending the payment network for the service by bringing in new methods for payment at an affordable cost.
A few of the key reasons businesses adopt payment switches is to address the challenges they have with managing multiple online payments. When there are different payment services involved, the transaction process becomes prone to failure in acquisition. In addition, there are issues related to connectivity and security.
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These challenges not only affect the service providers or businesses, but also the customers who expect a seamless user experience. In case of payment failure, the money sometimes takes many days to be refunded by the bank to the customer. It is irritating for them. This negatively impacts the reputation of the business and results in a loss in revenue.
That’s where payment switching apps come into the role. The transaction success rate is high with a payment switch app, compared to conventional payment solutions.
Benefits of Payment Switch App
- High success rate: The rules in a payment switch help in triggering certain operations, such as retrying when a transaction is declined, optimize the cost of routing, as well as filter the routing based on BIN, amount, and time of the day. These are dynamic rules which make the payment switching method different and more effective than conventional methods.
- Automation: The alternate options for merchants is to use payment gateways. These also establish interaction between multiple endpoints. However, the connections are static. In case there is a need of shifting the transactions to a new acquirer, it has to be done manually.
On the other hand, the payment switches follow a dynamic approach to route transactions. It allows merchants to automatically route the transactions to other acquirers if there is an outage or slow down at the end of the primary acquirer. So, if an acquirer declines a transaction, the rules will be triggered to retry the transaction from another acquirer. This improves the success rate of payment processing. - Multiple PSPs: Most of the payment switching apps come with token vaults. The token vaults allow merchants to leverage various payment service providers, while maintaining PCI compliance.
- Data consolidation: Reliable payment switch apps also offer functionality to consolidate data and translate different data formats into a single format. Businesses and merchants can use this data for analytics and intelligent insights.
Why develop payment switch application?
The market for mobile payment apps and fintech is growing at a fast pace. Stats show that the value of the mobile payment market around the world was $1.48 trillion in 2019. This market is expected to witness a CAGR growth of 30% from 2020 to 2027 and cross the $12 trillion mark by 2027.
Pitchbook reports that the venture capital investors had provided an investment of $1.1 billion to the fintech startups in 2009. The investment for the same was more than $44 billion in 2020.
The massive growth in the market is driven by the demand for online payments by consumers and businesses, especially after the COVID-19 outbreak. Contactless payment options at local shops, retail markets, grocery stores, medical stores, etc., have helped in stopping the spread of the virus.
People have now got used to online payments, which is why so many companies and payment service providers are creating new mobile apps for various purposes. Moreover, businesses are also looking for payment switch apps to process transactions effectively, have a higher success rate in payments, and get security across all transactions.
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Banks and fintech organizations have also launched new banking strategies and solutions. This has brought new opportunities for payment switch app development.
Key features of Payment Switch App
Every payment switch application must have the following features:
- Dynamic routing rules: Every acquirer may have its own rules of accepting payments and transactions according to specific parameters. To ensure that your switch app can work with multiple acquirers, you have to integrate dynamic routing functionality. This will route the transactions dynamically, even if some acquirers don’t have acceptance for specific payment options. Eventually, the businesses and merchants who adopt your solution will get optimum payment acceptance and reduced failure in transactions.
- Multiple PSPs: The app must provide multiple options to the users while processing the payments. People don’t like to be bound or have the option to pay on the basis of the service you provide. So, integrate multiple payment networks. This will also save the merchants from adopting multiple solutions for payment acceptance.
- Accounting and logging: Along with merchant-based automated elements, there should be accounting and logging features in the app. The aim of these features is to assist the reconciliation process at several endpoints.
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- Fraud management: This is a critical feature without which the app will fail. You must integrate robust features for strong security that can prevent frauds and cyberattacks. The latest tools that use modern technologies can help in this aspect to automatically detect and block fraud, prevent malware and other potential cyber threats. You must also define custom blocking rules and set automated notifications.
- Compliance: Your app must be compliant with all the essential security and data privacy standards followed on an international level. The data governance and privacy standards like GDPR can’t be ignored if you want to establish your name in the market and gain the trust of users.
- Encryption: You need to have functionalities and solutions that can encrypt all the transactions and communications between seller and buyer, or the web browser and destination. For high security, you must choose the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). This is a system and standard that provides encryption and tokenization.
How to develop a payment switch app?
1. Understand the requirements
The first thing to do while considering payment switch app development is to understand every aspect of a switch, along with requirements and tradeoffs. For instance, you need to have an idea about the market, demand for payment switches, IT and technology stack, as well as building relationships with PSPs and merchants.
A payment switch app can be hosted on the cloud as a software as a service (SaaS) or on-premise. You will need to evaluate what kind of tools, services, connectivity, etc., are needed to be integrated to create a solution that can be adopted easily.
2. Finalize the features
Security, encryption, fraud management, dynamic routing rules, onboarding multiple PSPs, and accounting and logging are the primary features that you need to have in your app. You can also choose some additional features to make your switch app stand apart from the competitors. So, make a decision on what features you are going to have in the application.
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3. Find app development company
Since this is an important and big project, you have to ensure that you choose the best mobile app development company for it. The first choice should be the companies that offer hybrid app development so that you don’t get stuck in the middle of the project. Your application will need integration with multiple tools and services, so it is better to opt for a hybrid app development company.
4. Testing
Once your payment switch application has been developed, the next step is to get it tested by experienced QA teams. When you make a choice for an app development company, it will be better to ask them whether they have a team of testers. It is because you wouldn’t like to hire individual testers for the app.
App testing is important as it is the phase of removing bugs and critical flaws from the code and make it run smooth for the users.
Payment switch app development cost
The cost of developing a mobile payment switch will depend on a number of elements and factors. These include the app platform (iOS/Android), the expertise of the app development company, UI/UX design, app size, enterprise system integration services used for security and encryption, and technology stack.
On average, the total payment switch app development cost will be somewhere between $35k to $50k.
Wrapping up
Payment switch apps are sensitive and critical. You have to take care of several aspects while getting your app developed. The role of the mobile app development company chosen for this project will be very crucial. If your app is robust, beneficial, competitive, and can address the challenges, its adoption will be high in the market.
For any other questions related to it, you can get in touch with our experts or share them using the comments below.
