What’s The Difference Between Payfacs and Payment Processors?

Here’s a scenario. You are a business owner or decision maker looking for a way to start accepting payments for your business, or you’re looking to switch providers for a better deal. Either way, you are looking towards the realm of payment facilitators and payment processors. But what’s the difference, and which is right for your business? A Payfac, or a Payment Processor? In this blog, we are going to explore exactly that, and leave you with a crystal clear idea of your best course of action. 

First off, what is a Payment Facilitator? A Payfac is a merchant services provider who will onboard you as a sub merchant on their own merchant account. This will still let you accept credit card payments into your bank account, but will save you the hassle of applying for your own account. It’s the easiest option out there for smaller companies who don’t need their own merchant account and want to keep things simple and streamlined. You can start accepting payments almost immediately, and will usually be set up with a payment gateway, which is the communication channel through which the payment data travels to and from the banks and credit card networks. 

Now that all sounds pretty sweet, so why would I want a payment processor when I can just get a payfac and save myself some trouble? Well, payfacs let people get started quicker because they act as a middle man between the merchant and the payment processor that the payfac uses. But if you want to play with the big boys, you might want to have your own payment processor, and skip the middleman for a more powerful solution.

Payment processors can do a plethora of things that a payfac can’t do. They can allow you to accept many more types of payment, letting you let your customers choose from any number of options that are available. For example, ePaymints can let you integrate with crypto so your customers can pay in cryptocurrency, at any brick and mortar such as a barbershop or pizza parlor. Payment processors can also do wonders in terms of reducing your processing fees and interchange costs with their own payment optimization (our speciality).

This is what larger businesses use, since they have larger costs, cater to more customers, and generally have more needs that a payment facilitator just can’t handle as well as a payment processor. By the way, there is no requirement for who can use a payment processor. Any small or medium business can use a payment processor, and doing so ensures they reap the benefits above just like any larger business would. 

So what are we exactly? ePaymints is a registered ISO of Elavon, one of the major payment processors in the U.S. Alongside Elavon’s best-in-industry payment processing capabilities, we can hook you up with AI chatbots and virtual assistants, innovative Point-Of-Sale(POS) systems, your own platform to engage with your fans or customers directly, esports tournaments, and more! We have a bunch of innovative partnerships available to all of our clients, and we love connecting businesses with powerful tools to stand out from and outperform their competition. Visit https://epaymints.com to learn more about our offerings, and how we can help you flourish in all aspects!