How to Streamline Payments for Your Mobile App: outsourced development with Spreedly

To use Spreedly, you need great developers. One question we therefore often here is: are there third party developers we can work with to help launch our app?

This guest post was written by the AppInstitute team.

AppInstitute provides a simple way for small businesses to create, publish and manage their own iPhone and Android app using a DIY app builder platform, making entering the app market easy for even the least tech-savvy small business owner.

When paying for things online, especially through an app, your customers want to rest assured that the transaction and their card details are secure. But developing, launching and maintaining an app is a big job in itself, sometimes leaving little-to-no time or resources for payment processing. Let alone making sure such payments are compliant with local regulations and data protection. 

Yet, if you wish to monetise your app you'll have to accept payments. Instead of building your own payment processing, however, it's more cost-effective and efficient to use a service like Spreedly to do the heavy-lifting for you.

The businesses that benefit

Ultimately, any business that takes payments through an app will benefit from Spreedly and AppInstitute's new integration.

Takeaway and restaurant owners, for example, can use AppInstitute's app builder to create an app with no coding required, and then Spreedly to accept payments for orders or booking deposits. 

Similarly, a band can sell merchandise or tickets via their app. An eCommerce company could offer its products through a dedicated app and seamlessly take payments from customers within the app. Subscription-model apps require regular, secure payments to be taken. Even charities can benefit by taking donations across multiple payment gateways.

Keeping everything in one place and on one platform improves the app experience for users. It also stops them having to leave an app to make a payment and potentially getting distracted elsewhere.

Improving the customer checkout experience

Improved customer experience is a huge bonus when integrating Spreedly within an app. Many consumers have a preferred payment option. Supporting multiple payment gateways alone is tough, but Spreedly allows a company to

These include Worldpay, Braintree, Stripe and PayPal, covering most of the popular payment options for your customers.

28% of customers abandon a transaction because of a lengthy checkout process, and one way to streamline this is through offering a payment gateway of their choice - especially if it automatically stores card details for future transactions. It tailors the checkout process to your customer and by making payments easier, you increase the likelihood that they come back for more.

To further improve customer loyalty, Spreedly's fingerprint technology detects customers across multiple channels, such as your mobile app and website. That helps support your customer loyalty programs and retargeting. 

To further improve your user experience, Spreedly has reporting tools and analytics that will allow you to look at pain points in the transaction experience. You can see where payments are taking a bit too long, where you might need to switch gateways, and where payments are failing. That eventually adds up to more sales for your app.

Enter new markets with ease

Through Spreedly (which is completely cloud based) your app can transact with customers in over a hundred different countries, making it easier to roll-out operations globally. Global app usage is on the rise, with the top 20% smartphone users in South Korea, Mexico, Brazil, India and Japan spending over 4 hours a day using apps.

Once established in your home country, taking an app global might be the logical next step and you'll want to ensure your payment infrastructure is capable of achieving this.

The benefits of outsourcing

When you outsource your payment processing, your development team can fully focus on refining your app and building new capabilities. It takes the time and hassle out of dealing with payments directly, including all the PCI compliance and security requirements. Keeping on-top of all the different connections to the payment gateways can be time-consuming, especially for a single app developer.

Spreedly keeps all these connections up-to-date and only requires a single sign in to connect with all its gateways. In other words, offloading the majority of your payment requirements to Spreedly allows your developers to focus on the really important stuff - building functionality that increases revenue.

Security perks

Data security is everything these days, especially post-GDPR. It can make or break your app and overall company reputation. Thanks to high-profile hacks such as Air Canada's app breach and British Airway's website and app hack, the safety of payment data is at the forefront of every customer's mind.

As already touched on, Spreedly does most of the payment security legwork so you don't have to - plus it's GDPR compliant. It acts as a kind of proxy, with any sensitive payment data stored securely with Spreedly and not reaching your own servers. That vastly decreases your own PCI compliance requirements. 

There's additional functionality that allows your customers to store their card details for re-ordering. It also supports subscriptions - something that's becoming increasing popular in eCommerce as well as the usual app, online education and membership models. In fact, the eCommerce subscription market has grown by 100% a year over the past five years. Netflix is a popular subscription example, along with the Dollar Shave Club (which was acquired by Unilever for $1 billion), Spotify and ClassPass. Spreedly also has technology that detects anomalous activity - like someone trying to commit fraud via a customer account.

Payment failure, either as a one-off transaction or as part of a subscription is irritating to both app owner and customer. Some 4% of abandoned baskets occur because a card was declined. However, Spreedly tries to reduce this occurring by refreshing stored card data. So you can focus on building a long-term relationship with your customers and not worrying on whether they can pay for it.

Smoother payments and transactions

A single API allows app developers to use multiple payment gateways and switch between providers when needed. Instead of spending time implementing one payment option, such as Stripe, you can use Spreedly and gain access to several - simply by changing the payment provider's name and the credentials within your code.

Then Spreedly stores, tokenizes, and updates customers payment details which makes payments and subscription processing much smoother. 

The Spreedly and AppInstitute implementation goes a step further when switching payment providers. You can select the payment provider that best suits your customers and business, and AppInstitute will dynamically switch between providers on an app-by-app basis. So, one of your apps could use Stripe and the other could use Worldpay, but both will use the same code to enable them to take payments via Spreedly. 

Plus, if one of your payment options fail or is underperforming, you can switch to another provider more easily through Spreedly instead of implementing a solution from scratch. This prevents any payment down-time or lost sales - and improves the customer checkout experience.

Mobile payments are supported too

Mobile payments offer their own complexity. There are different security and workflow challenges to consider when creating your own payment processes. But Spreedly already supports mobile payments, allowing a provider like Worldpay to integrate easily with a mobile app. It's cloud-based model and support in multiple countries means you can transact with your customers anytime and anywhere.

Analytics so you know how you’re performing

In the competitive app market, its vital to understand how your app is performing against the competition. When it comes to payments, Spreedly doesn't just highlight transactions that are taking a long time or failing. It also collects anonymous, rich data on transaction success rates that tell you whether your app is over or underperforming. It helps you identify weak spots that need improvement and make more informed decisions about what providers to use.

A new income, seamlessly implemented

Nearly every app developer can benefit from taking payments through an app. Unless it was developed solely with content marketing or a similar effort in mind, eventually all apps will be monetised. Apps can provide a vital new income stream and marketing channel for your company.

Taking payments via an app needs to be seamless and secure. But that's easier said than done, especially when implementing multiple payment providers and with a limited development team. Instead of directing resources towards developing your own payment options, it's a better idea to partner with Spreedly and let them work on your payment infrastructure. 

With over 220 gateways and APIs, Spreedly can take the effort out of making and taking payments - for both app creator and customer. Plus, analytics helps optimise your app's checkout experience based on customer transactions and industry benchmarks. Make it easier for people to checkout and you'll likely increase the amount and frequency of their transactions.

Then there's the security and compliance concerns that Spreedly takes care of. 

Allowing you to rest assured that your customers' details are safe, and helping you to focus on the main priority - making your app the best it can be.

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