When planned and setup properly, a seamless online payment process can save enormous amounts of time and energy which is normally required when handling payments manually. aXcelerate offers organisations powerful integration with Payment Service Providers (PSPs), the most recent addition being our integration with SqID Payments. In determining how best to manage online transactions for your RTO, there are a few things to consider.

What is a payment gateway?

Every time something is purchased online a number of factors are involved with transferring money from the payer to the receiver. This process can be quite complex, depending on the type of payment made. When a credit card is used, a handy analogy to make is to think of a payment gateway as the online equivalent of a credit card terminal. A payment gateway securely passes information about the payer and payment between the online point-of-purchase (i.e. a website) and the payment processor or acquiring bank (e.g. Westpac).

Why payment gateways are important.

The primary benefit of payment gateways (and in turn payment processors) is that when something is purchased a payment is made at the same time. This eliminates the to-and-fro’ing that would occur with placing an order, receiving an invoice and paying either before the product or service is consumed, or shortly after. Essentially it makes the purchase decision both more likely to happen (through the promise to the consumer of an immediate service), as well as eliminating the necessity for human administrative work with every purchase.

This is specifically beneficial for RTOs because services like MySkills are making the choice of training providers an easier one for learners by providing more transparency about training organisations. This information is provided primarily through the Internet, which places training organisations a few clicks away from potential learners when they are considering training.

With a combination of an online booking system linked to both a payment gateway and processor, and to a student management system, the following example becomes possible. A potential learner is considering enrolling in a short course to gain accreditation. Using information provided by MySkills, they compare several training organisations based on their location and completion rates. After deciding which organisation to go with, the student heads to the organisation’s website and finds the course they are interested in. The learner then fills out an online booking form, complete with payment details, and books themselves on this course. The learner’s payment is immediately on its way to the training organisation’s nominated merchant/bank account and an invoice and record of the payment is created automatically.

If a student management system is integrated with this process, the learner is automatically created as a contact in the system and this contact is enrolled as a student on the short course. This entire scenario would require no administration work on the part of the training organisation.

SqID Payments and your RTO

Thanks to its simplified reporting and automated reconciliation, SqID Payments is the perfect solution for RTOs trying to automate their finance administration processes. SqID processes all major credit cards and is run entirely from the cloud as a Software as a Service (SaaS), meaning no additional hardware or software is required. SqID Payments is also a merchant aggregator for Westpac bank so there is no need for a merchant account. This means they settle funds to any Australian bank account you nominate.

More Information About Integrating SqID with aXcelerate

To find out more about SqID Payments, click here.

To find out more about how SqID and aXcelerate can work together for your RTO click here.