If you’re a tech-driven Australian company needing to enhance your payment capabilities, you’ve likely hit the limits of out-of-the-box payment solutions. These barriers often include:
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A shortage of up-to-date payment data and the powerful insights they provide.
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The inability to process payments in real time.
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The lack of payment flow customisation options, which keeps you from creating the ideal customer experience you envision.
It’s no surprise that CTOs, CPOs and their respective teams look for a dedicated payment API stack to not only solve these problems, but also open up an exciting new level of payment possibilities.
We’ll explain how our payment API works and the benefits of using it for custom payment solutions, including:
Ready to learn more about how we can help your company better master your payment API needs? Check out our docs or speak with one of our experts today.
How Zai’s Payment API works
We’re a tech-first payment orchestration company that always has the CTO and CPO in mind. For over a decade, we’ve been creating bespoke payment solutions for growing online platforms’ complex payment challenges. Our journey has enabled us to create a unique offering in line with the needs of some of the fastest-growing companies in Australia and beyond.
What’s unique about our API is that it’s a RESTful API. With just one integration, you can accept debit and credit cards, direct debits, real-time payments and a whole host of other payment methods without having to integrate with multiple payment providers individually. Our APIs also have webhooks, which means you can set and receive notifications at each stage of the payment journey to better reconcile all your payments with your ERP or CRM system and set up a custom payment workflow.
As part of our commitment to customisation, though, we can offer your platform integrations to meet your interface requirements in a fully compliant manner.
Many other payment providers will set you up with a payment API and then offboard you if they deem you high risk. We do the opposite: before setting you up with any integrations, we will ensure you are compliant and have everything necessary to accept payments. That means you won’t have to worry about being offboarded once you integrate with Zai.
We know not only how important it is to have straightforward APIs but also the experts to support them. Aside from our technical documentation and sandbox, we’re methodical in ensuring we understand your needs from our first conversation. Think of us as a payment partner: we do so to ensure our payment solutions stay aligned with your evolving roadmap and keep you up-to-date as we enhance our payments API.
Zai’s payment API features
Multiple payment methods for improved customer experience
We know that each business knows their customers best, including which payment medium they prefer. We operate as a payment service provider, which is how we ensure you can directly plug into every popular payment option on the market, including:
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Credit cards (Visa, MastercardⓇ and American Express).
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Debit cards.
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BPAY.
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Real-time debits and transfers, including PayTo and PayID through the NPP.
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Wire and bank transfers.
Webhooks and API calls for up-to-date and customised solutions
Our payment APIs and supporting tools also provide you with up-to-the-minute data on your customers’ transactions. To do so, we incorporate both instant payment calls via our RESTful API and our always-on webhooks that inform you of any state change a customer makes. As we build out your payment solution, we work with your team to understand which triggers you need to know about to initiate other processes.
For example, you could use a payin from a customer to not only update your database immediately but also, by using split payment logic, pay multiple parties. You could also use this information to create new user accounts or create exciting new applications, such as pooling individual transactions for a batch payment.
More importantly, webhooks give your business intelligence, finance, and product teams valuable data as it happens. This real-time payment information allows you to start learning and iterating from your customers’ activity right away. Our payment APIs and webhooks act like a growth engine, letting you speed past the competition through continuous improvement.
Our payment APIs are also on 24/7. That means your customers can make a payment whenever they need to. Since we can provide this payment service to each one of your users, their transaction enters the network of their choice almost immediately. If you choose to use a new medium like PayTo, they’ll be able to settle a bill instantly with their counterparty.
Real-time updates for quicker payments
We can process individual line transactions as they come through instead of compiling a report or ABA files that we send off to the merchant acquirer.
With our real-time payment APIs and webhooks, you don’t need to wait for hours or even days to move through the customer payment journey. Instead, you can immediately give them the feedback that their funds are safely with you ready for use.
As an example of real-time updates, take an online learning platform that offers courses on demand for a monthly subscription. The platform offers new users the first week free on the platform as a marketing lead, requiring them only to input a bank account or a credit card number for later debit.
Seven days after a customer enters their card data, the platform initiates payment processing, but unfortunately, the payment details are incorrect. The platform prompts the customer to update their card information, which, thanks to Zai’s payment API, immediately validates the card and pushes a confirmation via webhook to the platform.
Within seconds, the platform unlocks the customer’s account, keeping them engaged without interruption. To ensure there won’t be any issues later, Zai’s payment API tokenises the card details for future authentication. Now, not only will future subscription credit card payments go through interrupted, they’ll be more secure.
Bespoke solutions to automate complex workflows
Unlike other payment API providers that open your account and leave it to you to figure out, we take a hands-on approach from the first time you reach out to us.
Our process works like this:
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An introduction call.
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A follow-up call between your tech or product leads and our technical experts. During this meeting, we want to make sure that our products align with your long-term payment API needs.
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We make an assessment and craft a proposal specific to your needs, including complex, multi-payment flows. During this time, you’ll have access to our sandbox, letting you test your ideas and get familiar with our tech.
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You’ll then build and implement our payment APIs into your platform, helping you reach the customer experience envisioned by your CPO and CTO.
During this entire process, we work hand in hand with you. That way, we can ensure that our success is your success and vice versa.
How a growing B2B platform used Zai’s payments API to reinvent their industry
Ordermentum, a leading B2B online order management platform in Australia, had a problem: despite alleviating a major pain point in the food services industry, their limited payment capabilities were holding back their true potential and mission to help the hospitality industry trade smarter.
This platform aids hospitality providers to instantly connect with suppliers. That way, restaurants and hotels of all sizes can source the produce they need to prepare top-notch food and beverage. The problem, however, is that no two users on their platform are alike.
Customers range from large restaurant chains all the way down to small cafes. Each one of these entities has different financial needs, credit lines, and business strategies. To fully meet these demands, the platform had to ensure that each user would get an online payment experience fully in line with their financial capabilities. Conversely, the suppliers on their platform also needed to see payment confirmation quickly, considering many of the products they sell are both low margin and perishable.
Our payment APIs and our team of experts sat down with their tech and product leads to learn about their vision for the perfect payment flow on their platform. After the meeting, we got to work on building out a model schema using the payment API as its base.
The resulting work produced a proposed solution that enabled customers to set their payment parameters, and automate commissions and other payouts, while also incorporating instant notifications.
Now, thanks to Zai’s payment APIs and experts, the platform:
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Lets buyers pay for products through whichever medium of their choosing.
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Enables purchasers to set up direct debits and stored value accounts for recurring orders.
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Uses webhooks to notify sellers the second a buyer makes a payment, even if the funds take hours or days to clear through the network.
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Takes their commission directly through the platform via intelligent payment flow.
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Builds trust between all parties.
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Provides countless Australians with higher-quality meals.
The platform continues to change the way Australian hospitality companies source products from providers. As their customers’ payment needs grow, Zai will be right there to support them.
Why use Zai’s payment API
The payment space is constantly evolving as new technologies arise to meet increasingly bespoke customer demands. Our payment APIs and team of experts keep your payment stack on the cutting edge of these changes. We do so through two means.
We’re always listening to our payment API users
First, we’re always looking for ways to help our customers get the most out of our APIs. For us, that entails a combination of regular updates to our tech, and, more crucially, listening to your needs as your business evolves.
If there’s a new feature or API functionality you need based on your customers’ payment requests, we’ll have our experts leverage our existing payment tools to help you reach those goals. That process could mean anything from creating a product update to helping you adjust your schema to interact with our payment API more efficiently.
We constantly look for new payment methods to add to our suite of APIs
Second, as payments experts, we’re constantly monitoring the ecosystem and adding new payment mediums as they enter the market. We know that consumer demand is the key driver of payments innovation.
That’s why we strive to be leaders in adding new mediums once they roll out. For example, we’re one of the first payment service providers to offer Australian companies API access to PayTo – the new real-time direct debit network in Australia. (We’re running a special promo to celebrate PayTo’s launch. Click here to learn more!).
As a tech-first provider, once a new payment launches, you’ll be able to access it directly via your already-incorporated API connection. From a product perspective, that means you can add this new medium into your platform or website with minimal coding, as you’ll only have to make minor adjustments. With Zai, you’re able to stay on top of payment trends both today and well into the future.
Our payment tools let you build the customer experience the way you envision
Customer experience (CX) is everything. Unfortunately, most off-the-shelf payment solutions have two constraints:
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Many don’t place nice with the existing user interface (UI) and CX, sometimes forcing customers to go off the platform to complete a payment
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They lack the true customisation that lets you deliver a fully personalised experience.
These limitations pose serious threats to customer experience, and, by extension, revenue. Our payment API overcomes these shortcomings by operating exclusively in the back end. That way, you can incorporate our payment solutions based on how you’ve designed them for your customers. As part of our commitment to customisation, though, we’re more than ready to offer your platform integrations to meet your interface requirements in a fully compliant manner.
Our APIs accelerate the customer feedback loop
Since our payment API is always on, your customers will continue to return to your platform because of the quick and seamless experience. Our webhooks and real-time payment methods ensure both you and your customers receive up-to-date information on whether payments are successful or not.
For example, with Zai’s payment API, online B2B marketplaces can enable customers to transact with one another in seconds, allowing funds and goods and services to exchange contemporaneously, without delays or doubts.
Conquer your payment challenges with Zai’s APIs and experts
As a tech-minded product leader, delivering your vision of a perfect platform hinges on how smart, automated and effortless it is for your customers to make and receive payments. With Zai’s payment API, you can make those innovative goals a reality.
Our team of experts is up to the challenge of helping you with your payment goals, regardless of how complex they may be. Contact us today to get the conversation started.
This information is correct as of January 2023. This information is not to be relied on in making a decision with regard to an investment. We strongly recommend that you obtain independent financial advice before making any form of investment or significant financial transaction. This article is purely for general information purposes.
