It’s common for authors to over-state or labour the point in their titles to grab the reader’s attention. After all, we as people like to draw attention to our best bits and keep people’s focus there. Overstating them if you will. Except that’s not the case here. Cardstream is unique. It’s humble in serving its merchants and partners. It’s agenda confluences with its customers’ and it cares. We develop according to demand, by listening to what you have to say. We try to behave as if we are the best payment gateway UK.
You can’t run a technology company as large and connected as ours on fair heart alone. It takes time and money investment to become the best payment gateway. You want to be on our side because of what we can offer you. Say you ran a hotel. You want to make sure that your demographic isn’t restricted to one particular type of person, else they may be put off by your décor or room sizes etc. We’re all familiar with Basil at Fawlty Towers and how he strives to allow only the poshest patriots into his hotel, ostracising his clients in the process. Cardstream have spent over two decades developing a Solution that accepts a diverse a range of merchants and partners as possible. From High Risk merchants to Low Risk, from local businesses to non UK merchants, from the smallest charities to larger corporations. This is a technical endeavour as well as the result of the tireless relationship building we manage. How have we made this possible?
First and foremost; Cardstream is an independent Payment Gateway. This here means that we work with all of the UK merchant banks and operate with some in Europe too. There are several advantages to this: we can board any UK business that approaches us with a MID, regardless of previous gateway; we can contact a larger range of acquirers to help our merchants get a new MID, increasing the chance of a high-risk business getting an account and helping to keep merchant account rates down; the ability to spread risk by having multiple MIDs connected to the same gateway, avoiding any potential processing problems if one account becomes unavailable. Using these same relationships we can indirectly assist with services we don’t provide, such as card machines and IVR systems.
Secondly we have a Price Guarantee, meaning that Cardstream cannot be beaten on price for the Payment Gateway. Combine this with the more cost effective fees you are likely to get from a merchant account through Cardstream, you could potentially have an unparalleled pricing scheme helping in the search for the best payment gateway for your site; cost is important too. Under the price guaranteed tariff, you would have access to the services you would expect from the best payment gateway: a virtual terminal, a payment gateway and a pay button. You are free to investigate all of these services Cardstream provide by asking for access to our Test Accounts. The integration page gives a great deal of information, including guides on our iframes, Hosted and Direct Integrations, all of which are responsive. Perfect for viewing on devices of any size.
What seems like the most adverse competition in the forms of ‘Off the Shelf’ solutions such as PayPal and Shopify can be beaten out on pricing. To some SMEs where every penny counts, the best payment gateway will be the one which doesn’t deduct the most pennies or pounds from their transactions. Speed of set-up may be a factor, but Cardstream can also do fast. With our large range of acquirers we can quickly return a quote to you to begin an application within two working days. We of course support PayPal too, by using Cardstream there’s no conflict in decision between the two popular choices.
One of the biggest endeavours of Cardstream is to be a provider for white-label solutions, which we’ve put ourselves in a strong position to accommodate. We’ve managed this by developing a large range of integrations with leading providers in e-commerce and partnering with all of the UK Acquiring Banks. This means companies looking for a rebranded Payment Gateway should find it easy to add this new product to their existing range of services.
Some other super services we offer include: the much sought after Recurring Transactions for all you subscription or contract based business out there; free and unlimited tokenisation; 3D Secure function; a dedicated support team and account manager, available with no delay or voice direction and an email Support service that is very quick in response.
We are, of course, PCI DSS Level 1 Certified. Security, price competency, excellent customer service, technical support and integration. That’s a pretty good package for only £18 a month.
