Merchants using direct marketing services from Marketing Architects Inc. will be able to determine faster whether a consumer’s payment card is valid through a new authorization service the company is using from VeriFi Inc.
Marketing Architects, which provides marketing and sales services to direct-response merchants such as those selling blankets with sleeves on television, has integrated its Voce interactive voice response system with VeriFi’s payment gateway, Los Angeles-based VeriFi announced Feb. 8. When consumers call in to buy merchandise and speak their payment card data into the voice response-system, Marketing Architects converts the information into data it immediately transmits to VeriFi’s gateway for authorization, Tony Wootton, VeriFi chief revenue officer, tells PaymentsSource.
“We determine if that is a good card number or not, possibly a fraudulent transaction, or one without enough credit limit,” Wootton says.
For merchants, that could mean fewer bad transactions and a lower charge-back rate, he says.
Many direct-response merchants collect payment information over a period of time and later submit it as a batch of transactions for processing, often resulting in a number of bad transactions, Wootton notes. By getting authorization while the consumer is initiating the transaction, the merchant could prevent many bad transactions from slipping by, he says.
Direct-response merchants place a high value on ensuring a transaction is valid because their customer-acquisition costs, which include paying for television and radio time, can be expensive, Wootton says.
VeriFi’s deal with Minneapolis-based Marketing Architects also is different in that the client merchant’s payment network does not change, Wootton says. “We don’t necessarily have to be the dedicated gateway for the merchant,” he says. “We’re the gateway for the merchant’s vendor.”
VeriFi is processing “hundreds of thousands” of transactions monthly for Marketing Architects’ merchants, Wootton says.
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