Despite technology’s move to the cloud over the past decade, many payment processors still use old, outdated platforms that are inflexible and costly. 

Payment processing companies such as PayiQ, a division of Quisitive, are creating new payment processing platforms that use cloud technology. These systems provide everything traditional payment services do but also leverage cloud-based architetcture to make transactions faster, more secure, and automated.  

During a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, Dan Devlin, Senior Vice President of Solutions & Strategy at PayiQ, Tom Byrnes, Senior Vice President of Marketing at PayiQ, and Daniel Keyes, Senior Analyst of Merchant Services at Javelin Strategy & Research, discussed the many benefits of cloud-enabled payments processing and how it better positions specific industries, including retail and food service, amid economic and demographic headwinds. 

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What is Cloud-Enabled Payments Processing? 

Cloud-enabled payment processing has two main components. The first is processing payments quickly and reliably. Cloud technology helps with this by spreading servers out across multiple locations, so if there’s an issue in one geographic area, the system can still work without disruption. This also helps with response time because there are multiple routes that can be optimized in real time for the transaction data to travel.  

Cloud architecture is designed with the latest security protocols in mind, which help protect it from threats such as hacking and data breaches. In PayiQ’s architecture, its cloud-enabled platform also acts as an integrated order processor in addition to handling payments. This means the platform allows merchants to consolidate both payment and order information in one place, creating a single lens into both transaction and individual order data that makes it easier and more efficient for them to run their businesses. 

“In the past, if a merchant wanted a report of their transactions, it would be a time-consuming and custom project,” Devlin said. “Traditional payment processors had to create a special report to get access to that data, and downloading those reports was a difficult, frustrating, and often expensive process for merchants.”