melissabattles-blog

[melissabattles-blog]

Payment Switch Architecture

Static payment gateways have proved to be poorly equipped to handle a complex payment ecosystem. Those who aim to expand their market and grow must be ready to switch from the static routing to a smarter and more dynamic routing that helps efficiently manage and optimize payments end-to-end. In this post, we bring you the best alternative to static routing, a payment switch architecture that will meet the hyper-growth needs of any merchant.

 What is the payment switch?

The payment switch is transaction-based software that can be built or bought. Using rules merchants devised, it dynamically routes payment transactions between a multitude of acquirers and Payment Service Providers (PSPs) end-points. It enables retries of declined transactions, routing by the time of day, routing by lower cost, routing by amount, and routing by BIN. The ability to dynamically route transactions makes payment switches more efficient than traditional gateways.

This dynamic routing of transactions, designed by a merchant’s rules to meet business needs, adjusts to the real-time environment provides better customer experience and optimizes all transactions from multiple providers to avoid high costs.

What are the benefits of the payment switch?

The payment switch enables merchants to easily route transactions to the backup acquirer in the case of an outage or acquirer slow-down and retry the transaction through the second acquirer and obtain approval when it’s declined, which helps save rates on declined retries, maintain constant response times to avoid possible time-outs and recover lost sales.

A large number of Payment Service Providers (PSPs) built token vaults that negatively impact merchants’ needs as they need to rely on only that one PSP and cannot maintain PCI compliance which will not affect daily operations. The payment switch doesn’t cause these problems as it translates various data formats, normalizes the data for export to analytics tools or into consolidated dashboards, and offers strong reconciliation engines so merchants can quickly examine payments across the entire enterprise.

Payment switch: build or buy?

As mentioned above, a payment switch can be built or bought. When making a decision, there are several things to keep in mind. Merchants’ needs, goals and other requirements must be well-defined. Those with strong payments product management, IT skills, and good PSP relationships could consider building their own switch. But those who need to connect to a multitude of new end-points are better off buying one. Some payment switches run on-premises while others are Cloud-based (“Software as a Service”); some have extensive connectivity, but others have stronger services and tools.

Merchants who sell globally with multiple end-point connections should consider the following:

- The payment switch must support multiple connections to multiple PSPs, global acquirers, and message formats

- It must use  dynamic routing rules defined by a merchant

- It can dynamically  control transaction volumes between vendors, based on automated parameters defined by a merchant

- It has accounting and logging features for supporting reconciliation across a multitude of end-points

- It offers tokenization tools and encryption and to establish PCI/DSS compliance

- It consolidates PSP reports and dashboards for simplified  payments reports

Unlike the standard payment gateways, which are static, fixed and leave no room for a change, the payment switch provides better options and has more advantages than gateways. The payment switch optimizes payments, dynamically routes payments, new payment providers can be easily added, merchants can test their payment flows, conduct granular analysis, protect customers and provide better customer experience, and finally, it enables a hyper-growth.

[melissabattles-blog]

US Students Have Found The Right Way To Study Online

Throughout the years, students struggled with finding the best and fastest way to learn and prepare for their exams. All the books, notes from lectures, and organizing study time left them with little to no free time. They had to go to the library to look for some extra material that would help them understand the topics they studied better and improve their grades.

In 2012, Adib Jackob and Soheil Zaman founded GradeBuddy, a platform where students can share their notes and study guides with students from all around the country, from any university, and thus save time and energy during semesters, especially weeks prior to their exams. Ever since 2012, the site has been improving, adding more and more universities to enrich their documents base. Students who are subscribers can find the notes from their courses no matter which university they come from or which course they attend.

There are those brilliant students, professionals in note taking who attend every class, create concise and high-quality notes, and prepare study guides that others can use to prepare better for their exams, or when writing essays or doing some presentations. Students no longer have to worry about taking notes during lectures; they can sit, concentrate and listen to a professor carefully and focus on video material presented and learn as much as possible during lectures.

After 48 hours (that’s how long it takes for all submitted notes to be checked, and yes, they have to meet the rigorous rules) students just log in to their profiles and have all notes they need there. They no longer have to search for other sites that may or may not have some material that covers the topic they study. On GradeBuddy, they can find everything that their professor emphasized during classes, which is of immense help when it comes to preparing for exams; students know which information is relevant and what deserves more attention.

GradeBuddy offers paid or free study materials. Students with excellent note-taking skills, can get access to GradeBuddy materials by uploading their own notes, earn credits which they can use to purchase a premium membership.

For those with poor note-taking skills, there is more than one option. GradeBuddy offers various subscription packages.

What all students find incredibly amazing about GradeBuddy is the price of these subscriptions. They are budget friendly and the service they get is top quality. There are absolutely no documents containing false or irrelevant information; all outdated documents get removed. There are also flashcards which students can make to review the key points before exams or use flashcards of other students.

GradeBuddy has helped students around the USA study smarter, not harder; they have been improving their grades while having enough time to finally get some decent sleep. The levels of stress are reduced since they no longer have to spend hours just rummaging through their poorly written or badly organized notes, study books, slides.

Aside from GradeBuddy, there are other similar sites, but according to their users, they are a bit pricey, they find some outdated materials, or students cannot find the notes for courses they attend.

GradeBuddy makes sure to have notes from all courses, and in a case that a course is canceled, students get a refund.

Credit for writing: TopLectureNotes.com