Organizer John typing here. I’m going to be very frank. Payment processing is all very confusing to me. Or rather, was very confusing to me. I suppose only because I had never really looked into how it all works before. But since I’m going to write a sponsor profile about Helcim–one of our awesome sponsors, obvs–I figured I’d do a better job if I looked into it a little bit.

Here’s what I, as a civilian, know. Someone hands me a machine into which I insert a credit or debit card. It asks me to confirm the amount I’m spending. I enter my PIN. Something magical happens and I get to walk away with merchandise even though I didn’t give anyone money! Amazing!

But of course, I did give them money. But how??

Well, there’s a company called a payment processor. There are lots that are that, actually, and Helcim is one of them. These companies give (or maybe rent or sell, I don’t know) machines (which are called payment gateways) to merchants who want to sell me stuff. They charge a monthly fee for the unit, though whether that’s for the unit, or for the unit to access a system I don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t matter. When I want to buy something using my plastic, the merchant hands me that machine that they got from the payment processor.

After I’ve done my bit where I insert and acknowledge and PIN-punch, the payment processor takes the information I just entered and submits it to my bank or my credit card company. The bank or credit card company checks to see if I have the liquidity to manage a transaction of that size. They also carry out a number of anti-fraud checks. In this example, they know it’s me because I’m just buying a couple of pints or a pizza again. They then communicate back to the payment processor and then to the gateway that all is copacetic.

And then, somebody else gets involved, and they’re also called a payment processor, but they’re called back-end payment processors. They don’t have payment gateways like Helcim does; instead, they handle the settlement systems for companies like Helcim (which are called…wait for it… front-end payment processors).

Somewhere in the middle of all of this, a small piece of the action is charged by the payment processor.

Now THIS is where choosing a payment processor becomes important. Not only are you, as owner of Suzie Joe’s Pizza & Beer, paying the monthly fee for the payment gateway, but you’re also paying a percentage fee of your transactions for this money to magically end up in your account. It’s nifty, and certainly worth it for the almost-cashless society in which we now live. But you definitely want to know what you’re paying, and be able to rely on that.

And here’s where Helcim becomes a great choice. I went to the website of several different payment processors. On some, I couldn’t even find prices. Helcim has clear pricing right on their website.

I also went and googled around to see what people complain about when they’re complaining about their payment processor. Those complaints are primarily unexpected fees and locked-in contracts.  Helcim themselves point out in a handy video some of the most common payment processor “tricks” and they say that they don’t play those games.

Normally, I like to write kind of light and cheery sponsor profiles. But just because I didn’t even really understand their business very well, I figured this one deserved a different treatment. If you’re like me and really didn’t know what the heck a payment processor does and why you would care, hopefully you’ve come away with a bit more knowledge.

Thanks for your sponsorship, Helcim!