Zipmark | Blog

By Tyler Machen

The Zipmark Product Team is pleased to announce the release of Zipmark Embed with organization enrollment. Embed has given vendors the ability to easily integrate Zipmark payment-related features into their applications. These features have allowed vendor customers to conveniently perform various actions such as enroll for bill-payment and add or remove their bank accounts securely.

Previously, Embed only allowed customers to perform personal enrollment, however, we have received feedback from vendors requesting that we allow customers to enroll on behalf of an organization for auditing and improved usability. These requests have come from vendors such as Lighthouse Property Insurance whose customers are agents that are employees within an organization. Until now, these agents could only enroll using Embed’s personal workflow. This would associate an individual employee’s personal information with the bank account of their organization. This should not be allowed since an employee and an organization are different entities.

By Jay Bhattacharya

Technology platforms that provide on-demand products or services, such as Uber, Airbnb, TaskRabbit, and Handy are giving rise to a new class of independent workers. Consumer demand is driving the growth of this on-demand workforce, and the companies providing these services, addressing the ever increasing appetite among workers for more flexibility.

But there’s a problem. The traditional banking solutions that nearly all businesses rely upon weren’t built with flexibility in mind. And this hypergrowth is being forced through the legacy products of banks built on the old notion that most people work the predictable 9-to-5 shift at one job.

The scale of change is huge, The American Freelancers Union projects that by 2020 more than 40% of the US workforce will be freelancers. Moreover, the nature of the change is multi-faceted: 25% of the US on-demand workforce uses more than one online or mobile platform for jobs. The on-demand entrepreneur can be an Uber driver during the day, perform TaskRabbit jobs between rides, write a blog post about their experience in the evening, and AirBnB their home while away on vacation.

Companies at the forefront of this movement such as Uber, TaskRabbit, Handy, AirBnB, and Instacart facilitate the collection of monies from consumers and must ensure fast, reliable payouts to their on-demand workers. They also have to look out for their own bottom line and part of that is the cost of processing payments.

Uber is an illustrative example of how receiving and disbursing funds to the freelance workforce can be a costly pain point.

In order to collect payment from their customers, Uber must pay industry standard card processing fees.  Based on their 2014 report, we estimate that Uber’s card fees in Q4 were over $8 million monthly.  This does not take into account the additional costs associated with paying out the proceeds to the driver.

For payouts, low tech options like paper checks can offer more affordability, but they come with long waiting periods. Traditional ACH processing requires high clerical demands on the business. Wire transfers, another traditional banking solution, provide the speed of same-day clearing but at an exorbitant price for recurring transactions.

Despite this evolution in the industry, on-demand workers suffer from an antiquated payment system that fails to maximize cashflow and emphasize faster payments..

Digital payment platforms, like Stripe, PayPal, and Zipmark are addressing the gap left by traditional financial services by focusing on security, trust and efficiency.  

These new digital payments platforms, replace complex, traditional solutions with flexible platforms that can easily enable features to collect and disburse funds quickly, satisfying the cash flow needs of their contractors.

Stripe for example takes a simple approach to transaction fees by charging a flat rate of 2.9% + 30 cents per transaction. Their seven-day processing period is on a rolling basis, so a charge made on a Wednesday appears in a bank account the following Wednesday. However, they have recently begun implementing two-day transfers.

PayPal also has the same base fee as Stripe, but they offer discounts as the volume of transactions goes up. Their payouts are considerably faster as well, and like Zipmark, PayPal charges just 50 cents per transaction, which take only one business day to clear.

While collecting and disbursing funds securely and efficiently are vital to the success of these businesses, there is a quiet but growing concern around the issue of compliance.

No business wants to be accused of money laundering. And it only takes one fraudulent user to cause huge legal headaches and potentially threaten the viability and reputation of a new company.

Part of the compliance issue that is also being resolved by digital payment platforms is ensuring businesses verify and collect accurate information about their users and contractors. Traditionally, the burden of auditing business processes has been carried by banks.  With the growth of marketplace models, banks and businesses must upgrade their processes and platforms to manage this risk.

This is particularly important for businesses in attracting the best, hardest working on-demand talent who don’t want to waste time with delayed payments or having to figure out which forms and documents they need when it comes time to file their income tax returns accurately.

PayPal, Stripe, and Zipmark are eliminating time-to-market, costs, and in-house technical obstacles and making it easier for businesses to focus on what matters most to them -- running and growing their business.

By Jay Bhattacharya

This summer NACHA, the electronics payments association that oversees ACH, announced that its members had voted in support of a significant rule change that would enable same-day transactions. The rule change introduces two extra windows during weekdays for transactions to be processed – mornings and afternoons – enabling receiving depository financial institutions (RDFIs) to handle and credit ACH transactions on the same day they are originated. This is great news for long suffering businesses and consumers tired of waiting one to seven business days for their payments to clear.

This is especially great news for Zipmark clients and their customers.  Zipmark’s payment platform currently settles transactions through the banking network and will be able to deliver files to banks during the new same-day settlement windows. Zipmark clients will already have the infrastructure in place to take advantage of this long awaited upgrade to ACH, no additional investment or work will be required.

Under the current ACH system, transactions are settled in overnight batches, which is why payments take about 24 hours to process, irrespective of what time in the day they are actually originated. The new rules will will incorporate the additional intra-day windows allowing payments to be processed during the business day instead of waiting until the end of the day.  RDFIs would be mandated to make funds available from same day ACH credits (such as payroll Direct Deposits) to their depositors by 5:00 PM at the RDFI’s local time.

The rule change is part of a broader industry move to improve payment systems with faster processes, including speeding up invoice and bill payments, payroll and funds transfers between businesses and consumers. Additionally the functionality changes may pave the road for future real-time payments.

Under the first phase of the change to same-day ACH, credit transactions will begin phasing in next month on September 23, 2016. The following year debits will begin to be processed on same-day ACH.

Businesses that are currently using Zipmark Deposit should see many benefits associated with intraday clearing ACH.  At a very fundamental level, same day ACH will lessen the impact of delayed files or other administrative problems that our clients sometimes have.  Working with Zipmark, our clients are able to improve the accuracy of their payment data, but when a company processes thousands of transactions a day and a deadline gets missed, it is hard on the company and more importantly the people who were expecting to get paid.  Same day ACH will alleviate this issue with the next clearing window being just a few hours away instead of a full day wait.  This can be particularly painful if a weekend or bank holiday looms.

Stay tuned for updates as same-day ACH begins its rollout next month. For more information about NACHA and ACH check out their website at www.nacha.org.

By Noelle Tassey

For most small- to medium-sized businesses, there is a constant tension between pursuing a responsible, measured approach to building their business with the need for growth and expansion at a breakneck pace.

At Zipmark, we work with a lot of SMBs and other emerging businesses that disburse funds to large numbers of recipients-- many of whom struggle to balance their responsibility to collect sufficient payment information with the need to increase activations and signups. Striking that balance may be a challenge for growing businesses, but failing to comply with regulatory demands can lead to severe reputational risk and financial loss. The most troubling scenario is when a company isn’t even aware of their obligation to collect specific information from their customers in order to disburse funds legally.

After working through these compliance issues with a number of our clients, we've implemented a set of non-intrusive “Know Your Customer” (KYC) practices that can keep your business safe, without hindering your growth. We're going to explore this in depth throughout this KYC series, but to start, here's some background on what KYC is and why it matters to your business.

KYC or "Know Your Customer" is a term used to refer to a wide range of regulations, guidelines, and procedures associated with verifying the identity of a business' customers. The main objective of KYC guidelines is to prevent banks from being used, intentionally or unintentionally, by criminal elements for money laundering activities.

"Failing to comply with KYC guidelines could easily, and sometimes unknowingly, make the business vulnerable."

In the last two decades, identity theft, financial fraud, terrorist financing, and money laundering have become the focus of a wide range of global regulators. KYC policies are an increasingly important weapon in the fight against these kinds of criminals. Although KYC is generally defined in relation to financial institutions, anyone who is sending transactions through the US bank network has a responsibility to conduct basic KYC checks.

What many SMBs don’t realize is that if they’re behaving as a payment aggregator or marketplace, these regulations and compliance demands apply to their business. Failing to comply with KYC guidelines could easily, and sometimes unknowingly, make the business vulnerable. All it takes is one single bad actor to exploit your system, and your business could be shutdown immediately.

It is crucial for businesses to make sure they have the right KYC practices in place to avoid being susceptible to these risks. This means they have to collect specific payment and identity information such as their customers’ legal names, addresses, and social security numbers. Collecting this information may seem intrusive and daunting to SMBs that are trying to grow at a viral pace. Many SMBs are reluctant to collect any customer information beyond name and email, assuming that placing any additional burden on the customer will cause abandonment. We’ve found that this assumption, while commonly held amongst growing businesses, is often proven wrong in practice.

Collecting extra customer information such as an address doesn’t actually constitute a meaningful burden on the customer and doesn’t place any additional hurdle to their activation. If your customers want what you're selling, the incremental effort required to complete this verification is marginal.

However, if SMBs continue to have this kind of tunnel vision, they will ignore very real risks that come from not following responsible KYC practices. Having a great growth curve is meaningless if one bad transaction could result in your business being kicked off the banking system, or becoming embroiled in legal proceedings.

At the end of the day, a good KYC process can be reduced down to the following:

Do you know who you're disbursing funds to?

Can you verify the identity of this entity?

All types of marketplaces and growing businesses can implement hassle-free and secure KYC practices. When properly implemented, KYC checks do not create a resource strain on an organization. Take a moment to reexamine your business and be certain you have the right safeguards in place.

By Jay Bhattacharya

The changes happening in digital payments today are being driven by fintech innovators improving almost every way that people and businesses exchange and manage their money.

The “Uber of X” boom is affecting every industry and innovative companies responded and achieved market share by focusing on products that serve the unmet needs of these companies. But innovative products need to be accompanied by strong distribution strategies that drive market share from incumbents and stay relevant.

A natural progression is that as the market evolves, the focus on product is joined by pressure to distribute and service customers. Running parallel to these developments in fintech are large companies with more traditional products who are struggling for growth and slow to innovate in the face of changing business norms.

In recent years the big players have taken notice of the innovations in fintech, and in a sign of maturation of the market, as well as leadership from smart executive teams, we’ve seen prominent names acquire fintech disruptors. PayPal acquired Braintree – Braintree acquired Venmo even before that – and Vantiv acquired Mercury. Going forward, we can expect that leading companies will find a way to absorb startups while rewarding entrepreneurs and investors for pushing innovation forward and opening completely new markets.

Similar to the emergence of marketplaces, we see similar first movers taking advantage of the opportunity for disruption in B2B payments and small business solutions.

These companies are shifting market share and getting the attention of companies through focused product offerings and differentiation from traditional payments through better usability, and ease of integration.

Digital payments is a massive industry that will support multiple winners and will always rely on new transformative technologies to drive the industry forward. Recent considerations are not an indication that the market is waning, but rather that is growing, becoming stronger, and opening to new competitive innovations.

This weekend, on April 18-19, the FinTech Hackathon will bring together some of FinTech’s top developers and designers for a weekend of coding, discovery, and stamina. First launched in 2013 by Nick Gavronsky and Francesca Krihely, the FinTech Hackathon has become a regular New York City event for the FinTech industry to gather and share ideas.

The hackathon provides a platform for FinTech startups to reach developers, test new ideas, and connect with leading financial institutions, which is generally a difficult task in our industry. This year’s edition is already sold out with more than 230 developers, designers, and investors registered to attend. The weekend hackathon will be held at the Betterment office, where attendees will have 24 hours to build a new financial product and pitch it to a panel of judges for a chance to win some amazing prizes. Zipmark is providing a $500 gift card to Grand St. and other partner prizes include an Oculus Rift and Oculus Rift development kit, gift cards to Netflix and Amazon, as well as $1,000 in cash.

In order to compete for the prizes the participating teams will have to utilize the partner APIs to build their products and apps. In addition to Zipmark, this year's API partners include Context.IO, MongoDB, OANDA, MasterCard, PsychSignal, QuantConnect, Xignite, and Quovo. In previous years the teams have incorporated the partner APIs to come up with applications for risk management, trading, retail banking, regulatory compliance, and mobile payments. We're excited to participate this year as an API partner, and more importantly, we’ll be showcasing the latest version of the Zipmark platform. 

This version of Zipmark provides an embeddable UI that can be easily implemented to manage securely the most frequent payment related actions like registering payers and payees, triggering payments, and creating dashboards. It is entirely customizable and white labeled, providing the developer with full control of the UX and styling. We are excited to see how the teams will utilize Zipmark and the types of products they will build.

At Zipmark we have the privilege to work with an incredibly diverse array of companies, allowing us to learn about everything from crowdfunding to real estate. With every new client, we learn more about their industry and needs from the perspective of a payment provider. We started our Community Spotlight feature to shed some light on the amazing businesses we work with every day. For our first feature, we sat down with the team at Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator (ERA) to learn more about their organization and how their payment processes have evolved to meet the challenges of a rapidly changing startup ecosystem.

Today Silicon Alley is a thriving hub of innovation with an entire infrastructure and startup support system, but as recently as ten years ago none of this existed. Startup-focused accelerators and innovation labs were a West Coast phenomenon, and New York-based startups needed the same ecosystem and resources. ERA was one of the first accelerator programs for entrepreneurs in New York. Launched in 2011, ERA is an accelerator and early-stage fund committed to building the next generation of great New York technology companies.

Created by New Yorkers for startups looking to grow their business in New York, ERA now has 80 alumni companies in its portfolio. Companies such as Makers Alley, Bespoke Post, TripleLift, Get Maid, and LingoLive have all gone through the ERA program successfully. The program combines hands-on help, seed capital, free co-working space, and access to their expert leadership team and more than 250 mentors to quickly get companies to the next level. The accelerator is highly selective, but companies lucky enough to make the cut can expect to receive hands-on help with every aspect of their business.

“Zipmark has been a fantastic way to collect payments — no more checkbooks, Excel sheets and bank runs required."

Once ERA began to expand, better payments became a priority. Like many growing organizations, they were getting by with a cobbled-together solution that couldn't keep up with their rapid rate of growth.Tired of dealing with the annoyance of physical paper checks and constant bank runs, we worked with their team to streamline their payment operations and take their processes online. Jeremy Harper, an Associate at ERA says, “Zipmark has been a fantastic way to collect payments — no more checkbooks, Excel sheets and bank runs required. It’s easy and reliable. Plus, the dashboard format makes the process a breeze to navigate.”

Without the headaches of manually creating invoices, the ERA team was able to spend their time where it was most needed -- supporting the next generation of entrepreneurs and innovators.

By Jay Bhattacharya 

New technology has made amazing advances in business processes, but there's one common pain point that so many companies we talk to still share: printing and mailing paper checks.

With the increasing number of automated payment options in the market, why are companies still paying by such labor-intensive and error-prone methods? Without being too dramatic, the answer lies in how the business world has evolved, and how payments have gotten left behind.

Technology changes over the past 20 years have revolutionized most if not all business processes. These changes have led to certain fundamental changes such as the increase in freelancers taking market share from established service companies i.e. "The Freelancer Economy". It's easy for someone to set up shop with just a website, Internet connection, and some mobile devices. In fact, mobile devices have even revolutionized previously immutable, hard infrastructure, such as cash registers. 

Unfortunately, the ways to make business-to-business payments have not experienced a similar transformation. This is because the banking institutions serving most individual clients and small- to mid-size businesses haven't had to change how they service business-to-business payments. Account opening and management has essentially moved to online and mobile channels, but actual transactions are still accomplished by check, wire, ACH, or card.

Historically, banks have argued most new payment methods are inherently less safe and secure, but new service models are challenging this argument in completely different ways. In the case of large enterprises, there has been a slow but steady change to "internal" or proprietary services, such as commercial cards, to replace check and wire transactions for things like supplier payments. As more small businesses and individuals receive payments from other businesses, companies will need to establish new payment platforms to eliminate inefficiencies, while keeping with regulations and compliance, and provide reliable payments across this new group of recipients. With new payment platforms established it will require more active record keeping and auditing for payments leaving the bank and going to entities outside the network. One of the best ways banks can address this need is to move away from the backtesting and audit model and deliver automated payments solutions that collect, validate, and manage all this data up front.

You don't have to look any further than a your average small- to medium-sized business' accounting ledger to see how automated payments will benefit businesses. By simply eliminating the burden of individual bank tracking for each payment issued, automated payment services can help these businesses get around the bureaucracy of banks and reward them with better cashflow. The downstream benefit for banks is better transaction data, controls, and ultimately a network to which they can cross-sell products.

Marketplace companies like Uber, Elance, and Airbnb, who accept payments from customers on behalf of their suppliers, have become a new intermediary in business payments. As a result, marketplace companies have an expanding investment and personnel dedicated to payment operations to ensure the people serving their customers (drivers, freelancers, and homeowners) receive their payments reliably. Now imagine these companies before their multi-billion dollar valuations and you have the situation for hundreds of marketplace companies that are striving to be the next big one. The need for streamlined and automated payments from their customers at the point-of-sale, directly to their supplier and vendor relationships, is absolute.

In the near future, marketplaces should look to automated payment tools to improve liquidity and cashflow, in the same way that retailers look at inventory optimization tools to cut down product latency. This would lead to greater transparency, better predictive modeling, and even less work at tax time. Many bankers think we need to sacrifice security to get to B2B payment automation, but if we adopt new platforms we don't need to sacrifice security to obtain speed and efficiency.

If you’re a marketplace business looking to automate your payments get in touch with us at [email protected].

by Galina Khorkova

For anyone entering the payments industry, it is normal to assume the industry is stuck in a legacy system, bound by complicated, interdependent, and slow processes. After all, when you think about innovation it’s rare to have banking come to mind. However, as someone who’s recently joined a payment startup for the first time, I was surprised by the fast pace of change and energy towards innovation throughout the entire ecosystem. I was able to experience this first-hand thanks to Money 20/20 earlier this month. After four days of panel discussions and back-to-back meetings, it was obvious there are several key pillars responsible for moving the industry towards a more open, fast, and flexible system.

The first of these pillars is customer demand. Simply put, people expect a better user experience and faster processing times. Customers want easy and intuitive front-end applications as well as efficient and streamlined back-end processing. These demands are being made across the board; retailers, consumers, large and small businesses all want more. They require greater visibility and more control over their payments. While some providers are starting to meet these demands, we need to have greater interoperability in order to satisfy them completely.

The second supporting pillar is technology. By 2015 mobile payments alone are expected to grow by 60.8% to 47 billion transactions. Smart phones, cloud-based solutions, and real-time payments are providing new options for consumers and businesses. This and other technologies are challenging the legacy payment system, and it’s also making it easier for new companies and startups to enter the industry and provide fast and simple solutions to many customer demands.

The third, and most unexpected pillar is collaboration. While banks may not be the most flexible of institutions, they are a key driver of innovation because they collaborate with many new payment services and technologies. It’s the collaboration between financial institutions, startups, merchants and other payment providers that’s making it easier to deliver faster and streamlined services. Payments are ripe for change, and while we may not have a complete overhaul of the system, we are seeing accelerated change because of unprecedented levels of access to the banking system through a greater appetite for partnerships.

If I gained anything from Money20/20, it was the confirmation that this is the best time to join the payments industry. The pace of innovation, consumer demand, changing technology, and openness to collaborate by all the major players, are steering the industry towards a new period. There are still many challenges to resolve, but that’s what makes this industry so exciting and worthwhile. I’m certain there’s much to look forward to in the coming years and the fast pace of change will continue to make this industry one to watch, both for veterans and newcomers alike.

by Jake Howerton

The terms ‘eCheck’ and ‘electronic check’ are frequently used to describe processing transactions on the ACH network and are often associated with ‘digital check’. However, when we talk about digital checks at Zipmark, whether it’s with banking partners, regulators, merchants, or payers, we mean something entirely different.

Before diving into the key components of a digital check, it’s important to realize the evolution of the payment industry. It was only a decade ago that regulators made digital checks possible through the Check 21 Act. By late 2004, the act went into effect and for the first time ever, the Check 21 Act allowed a paper check recipient to create a digital version. As with many regulatory initiatives, it came as a reaction to what was already happening in the world at large. In this case, it was the digitization of transactions, which were formerly conducted entirely on paper. The widespread use of digital transactions by consumers and businesses provided a framework for banking institutions and regulators alike to formalize the digital process. The Check 21 Act enabled the United States’ banking infrastructure to modernize their processes and paved the way for consumers and businesses to deposit paper checks using their mobile bank’s app, which is nearly ubiquitous today.

The digitization of payment transactions has been and still is a fluid process. Regulations have adjusted over time as institutions, processors and businesses moved toward more modern practices. In many cases, the regulatory framework adjusted to enable best practices and outline responsibilities of participating institutions. One key component of this was the recognition of Remotely Created Checks (RCCs), which are checks drafted on behalf of the payer and typically done by an institution. For example, RCCs are used when you pay your online bills through your bank, or when a depositing business creates the check on your behalf.

One of the ongoing discussions in the banking and regulatory community that deals with the specifics of Check 21 and RCCs has been Electronic Payment Orders (EPOs). Essentially, EPOs are a formal recognition that RCCs never have to be on paper and can be 100% electronic from end to end. Much of the discussion revolves around whether there needs to be a distinction at all, and if so, would any rules need to be changed, made more specific, or adjusted to deal with this. A formal decision is yet to be confirmed, but you can visit FedPaymentsImprovement.org to view the ongoing discussions and learn about the latest updates. 

At Zipmark, these regulations and concepts form the basis of what we call a digital check. When merchants use our service, they are able to present a specific charge (usually an invoice) to a customer, and provide the ability to make a payment against that charge. The payer can then register an account, and provide an electronic authorization for us to process a Remotely Created Check on their behalf. Being an independent third party enables us to collect the necessary details to ensure the authorization is legitimate and to protect both the payer and the recipient from the inherent risks in this process.

by Jay Bhattacharya

For most individuals, the ways they collect income are limited to payroll or investment income.  A business that has hundreds or thousands of customers that interface with them on their website or mobile application has a much more complicated problem in being certain where their income is coming from.  Increasingly as mobile and online payments grow in adoption, businesses, especially small and medium sized ones are exposing themselves to risk and potential losses by not having the right types of processes in place from the start.

A recent study by LexisNexis and Javelin Group highlighted this phenomenon in the context of massive increase in mobile retail solutions:

Mobile browers, mobile applications and mobile point-of-sale (mPOS) hardware technology such as Square have put mobile payments within the reach of even the smallest merchants (less than $1 million in annual sales), 39% of whom are attracted to the mobile channel. And the trend is growing: 25% of merchants of all sizes expect to accept mobile payments in 2014, with mPOS poised to generate the biggest growth: 7% of merchants used mPOS devices in 2013, after no merchants reporting using it in 2012.

The cost of fraud is not evident in the day-to-day management and streamlining of a business, but without a doubt there are significant dollars associated with not employing strong KYC (Know Your Customer) processes.  The report cited indicates that retailers see 3x the value of the actual fraudulent transaction in losses.  Service businesses with ongoing and recurring payments open themselves up to even greater costs chasing down bad actors and investigating longer running schemes.

 Businesses can take a few key steps to protect themselves from the start:

Fully authenticate transactions by following best practices in your implementations and partnering with the right payment partners.  If you don’t know how to start, there are lots of places online that you can ask such as Quora.

Don't use personal payment services like Paypal or Chase Quickpay to make business payments.  These may seem lower cost at first, but the lack of customer support and risk management will be a problem if you encounter a case of fraud. 

Track fraud even after it is resolved.  Not many merchants keep a database of risky clients or customers.  Most fraudsters will try to hit the same merchant again, especially if they implement a new channel such as mobile.

by Noelle Tassey

Growing a business is an exciting process full of new experiences, new challenges — and new headaches. At Zipmark, we’ve definitely hit a few bumps in the road. To navigate the challenges of scaling your business, it’s imperative to find solutions that grow with your company, and reduce your staff's workload. It’s hard to find a service that accommodates the needs of a 2-person team as well as a 20-person team, but we think we’ve found a few that work pretty well.

Here are 5 of our favorites:

Customer Support

There comes a time in every company’s life when you have to start supporting customers. It’s an exciting time (we have customers!) and it’s a little bit scary (what do we do with them?). Enter Helpscout. At Zipmark, we decided early on that we needed to adopt a full-company support policy. That means every employee from our CEO to our newest hire gets a spot on the support rotation. To help facilitate that kind of collaborative support, we turned to Helpscout. Helpscout has a lot of great features that go beyond just shared inboxes. But above all, it is simple, and allows you to focus on helping the customer.

CRM

This is a little bit more general, since CRM needs vary widely from business to business. However, no matter what you do, you need some kind of CRM solution, and you need it as soon as possible. If you want your business to grow, it is a must-have. Without information about your customers and sales process, it is impossible to make informed decisions. There are many CRM options out there, from basic lead capture to full marketing automation services. If you need a straightforward sales tracking system, we’ve found Pipedrive to be a simple and flexible solution. Pipedrive allows for a wide range of customization and has integration features that make it easy to work with other programs. That flexibility was essential in our search, since we were still figuring out what we needed in a solution.

Project Tracking

You probably think of GitHub as a developer tool, but it is so much more. At Zipmark, we use it for everything from operations to sales. GitHub makes it easier to coordinate projects between functional teams, and manage execution. In the process of doing so, you’ll find that you are documenting your business’ practices — building a manual for the next hire(s). Which is why we also have a repository that is exclusively for building our internal knowledge base. It’s where we document every process, and every change — even things that didn’t work. You might be a team of two right now, but pretty soon you’ll have three, four, five employees, until one day you’re on the elevator wondering where to find more office space. Building a knowledge base from day one means those new employees will come up to speed faster.

Internal Communication

Slack is an essential part of life at Zipmark. As your team grows, there’s a premium on maintaining good communication. In the early days of Zipmark, you could communicate with your coworkers just by turning to the desk next to you. As our team grew, we wanted to maintain that informal communication, so we turned to Slack. No matter where our team members go, we can all stay in touch and stay on task. Having a group chat really proved it’s worth during Hurricane Sandy. Between evacuations and power outages, our entire team was working remotely. With good team communication, we didn’t miss a beat, and more importantly, it was business as usual for our customers.

Payments

There’s nothing better than the moment your company starts looking for a payment solution —people want to pay you! Unfortunately, the search process can be pretty unbearable. Depending on your line of business, there are several options you might want to consider, none of which are mutually exclusive. When it comes to card processing services, we refer our clients to our partners at Vantiv. However, some payments are more suited to checking accounts (especially if you’re sensitive to transaction fees), which is why we don’t recommend using credit cards in isolation. For checking account payments (both collections and payouts), I obviously recommend Zipmark. We built our product with the needs of growing companies in mind. From excellent customer support to customizable implementation options, we’re here to help our merchants grow. That means taking care of payments, so that you can focus on building a lasting business.

by Jay Bhattacharya

Everywhere you turn these days, technology is driving business processes to be more efficient.  While maximizing the impact of limited resources is the the day-to-day goal for nearly every small business, we continue to see most non-retail businesses accept archaic and costly paper checks. Most of us grew up in a time when personal checkbooks were part of the standard financial toolkit and in certain cases checks are still the preferred method of payment.  Accepting checks comes with an enormous amount of risk and hidden costs.  Here are some things you need to know if you choose to take them:

1) Accepting a check is a leap of faith:  All card payment methods verify funds at the time of purchase.  Accepting a check on the other hand, is a leap of faith that the account being drawn on has sufficient funds to cover the transaction.  There typically are not many alternatives for a merchant or biller when a check bounces.  Overall check volume may be declining, but the percentage of bad checks is increasing as found by the analysts at Celent.

2) No matter what you think, checks are not free: When asked why they still accept paper checks in light of so many electronic options with lower risk, merchants most often cite the fact that checks are free.  There are many sources of research on the cost of issuing and accepting paper checks ranging from $4 to $10 per check when you factor in labor costs.  Businesses also pay for fraud protection services and in the case of a bounced check, punitive fees from their bank.  The bank fees may be separate line items or bundled into the account servicing fee.  So, while checks may not have a transaction fee, the costs are very real and can be more than businesses think.

3) No security features at all:  Some merchants may require ID to accept a check, but if you consider it, your bank routing and account number is out there for anyone to see.  Not to mention your legal name and address as well.  On face this is a completely unacceptable risk and there is no way to take advantage of new technology such as tokenization and strong encryption which is securing the universe of electronic payments. Moreover, the consequences of a compromised checking account are far greater than typical card fraud.  In many cases the account holder is on the hook for fraudulent transactions because checking accounts do not carry the same liability limits as card accounts.

4) Speedy? Not really:  For most businesses, particularly small businesses, cashflow is a crucial issue.  Checks are fraught with problems if you need to predict when a payment is going to hit your account and become available for you to use.  Some dependencies include your bank's hours, the issuing banks geography, size and policies, availability rules, and transaction size.  

Over the last few months, our team has been hard at work trying to take the pain out of payouts. As a result of that effort, we’re pleased to introduce our latest service: Zipmark Deposit.

Our #1 priority is to eliminate pain for our clients. Since we started Zipmark in 2010, we've heard the same pain points again and again: reliability, transparency and support. To handle payouts, companies often have to hire new staff, build internal infrastructure, and put more resources on customer support. What does all of this mean? Fewer resources and less energy focused on actually growing the business.

We realized growing businesses needed a payables platform that they could set up quickly, and scale up without ongoing work. To achieve this goal, we act like an extension of your team -- not like a payment processor or vendor. That means:

Deposit pool funding is easy, and same day -- send us funds via wire, ACH, or Zipmark. Likewise, you can send us the information for your payments via file upload, API, or SFTP.

We will collect and validate bank account information to make sure payments go to the right place, and get there reliably.

Zipmark is your support team. If there is a problem with a payment, we will handle the entire error resolution process, including communicating with the recipient and the recipient's bank.

We speak English. You don’t have to deal with any cryptic bank error messages or unexplained payment failures. We tell you exactly what is going on.

This is the first payout solution designed for growing businesses. As your business grows and changes, Deposit scales to meet your needs. Simplified, reliable clearing schedules, and quick transfers, give businesses increased flexibility while allowing you to send funds right on time.

BOSTON, MA--(Marketwired - Jul 30, 2013) - Zipmark™, a pioneer in mobile and online payments, today announced that RE/MAX® Executive Realty, a RE/MAX affiliate, has made Zipmark available as a rent payment option. Residents of RE/MAX Executive Property Management now have the ability to pay their rent online or via a mobile phone using Zipmark's secure digital check. Once payment is submitted with Zipmark, funds are deposited into the appropriate RE/MAX Executive Realty operating account on the next business day.

RE/MAX Executive Property Management residents now no longer need to mail a check or visit the property manager's office. RE/MAX's deployment of Zipmark follows on the heels of both IBS and RentShare selecting Zipmark to conduct digital check rent payments for their respective property management clients.

"RE/MAX Executive Realty is staying ahead of the curve in leveraging payment technology to simplify and improve the payment experience for both the property manager and the residents," said Jay Bhattacharya, CEO and co-founder of Zipmark. "Digital checks from Zipmark are the best in class solution as businesses seeking to improve the speed, security and convenience of payments. The rental market is hungry for a payment option that addresses these needs and keeps it easy for tenants. Which is why replacing outdated paper checks with Zipmark is a smart choice all-around." 

"I've tried to ensure that our residents have access to the most convenient tools available. Residents have been asking for the ability to pay online for a while," said Bill Wright, Founder of RE/MAX Executive Realty. "However, other online payment platforms didn't make my life or my residents' lives easier. Zipmark is great for my business and it's great for my residents. No complaints!"

About Zipmark Zipmark's goal is to remove barriers between businesses and their money by bringing the checkbook into the 21st century: reducing the amount of time and money it takes to make a check payment, eliminating the possibility for bounced checks and taking all risk out of the equation for payer and payee alike. Zipmark was launched in 2010 by Jay Bhattacharya and Jake Howerton, and is based in New York City. To learn more: www.zipmark.com.

Zipmark's investors are Village Ventures, Contour Venture Partners, NYC Seed, High Peaks Venture Capital and the New York City Investment Fund.

About RE/MAX Executive Realty  RE/MAX Executive Realty was founded in 1992 and has offices throughout Massachusetts. RE/MAX Executive Realty was recognized by RE/MAX of New England both in 1999 and 2001 as the Outstanding RE/MAX Franchise of the year. In 2010 RE/MAX Executive Realty was named by RE/MAX International as one of the Top 50 Franchises in the United States.

NEW YORK, Apr 10, 2013 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Zipmark(TM), a pioneer in mobile and online payments, today announced a strategic partnership with Rearden Commerce, Inc., the creator of Deem(TM), the largest and most diverse syndicated commerce network, to enable merchant payments to Rearden using the Zipmark platform. The partnership enables Deem's merchants to pay for offers and marketing fees via Zipmark digital check, reducing the costs and complexities that merchants typically face in payment processing. Zipmark's unique patented payment platform and user experience will allow Deem to onboard its merchants quickly and confidently.

"Zipmark was created to address the speed and cost challenges faced every day by businesses of all sizes," said Jay Bhattacharya, CEO of Zipmark. "Zipmark is the first true modernization of the checkbook. The ACH network hasn't changed in decades and businesses have reverted to paper checks because of the lack of innovation. It was high time for check innovation and Zipmark's secure digital check is the answer. By adding Zipmark as a payment option for its merchants, the Deem platform will be able to collect fees via secure digital check overnight."

The Deem platform is a highly configurable white-label solution that can be embedded virtually anywhere across web, mobile and other social surfaces. The technology powering the platform - its "relevance engine" - correlates the identity, preferences, location and context of a user with the unique availability, capabilities and offerings of merchants to deliver personalized deals and offers. In this virtual commerce circle, the customer, merchant and partner site all gain significant benefits: the customer experiences more relevant content and an easy, seamless, direct purchase; the merchant gets broad reach targeting relevant customers and high performance marketing in the form of transactions versus leads; and the partner maintains customer engagement, retains brand consistency and shares in revenue.

"Deem partners with merchants across a wide variety of industries, but of particular importance to us are local merchants - typically small businesses," said Patrick W. Grady, founder and CEO of Rearden Commerce, Inc. "Deploying Zipmark's leading-edge technology will enable us to settle payments with our local merchants in a new and highly efficient manner."

About Zipmark

Zipmark's goal is to remove barriers between businesses and their money by bringing the checkbook into the 21st century: reducing the amount of time and money it takes to make a check payment, eliminating the possibility for bounced checks and taking all risk out of the equation for payer and payee alike. Zipmark was launched in 2010 by Jay Bhattacharya and Jake Howerton, and is based in New York City. Zipmark's investors are Village Ventures, Contour Venture Partners, NYC Seed, High Peaks Venture Capital and the New York City Investment Fund. www.zipmark.com

About Rearden Commerce

Rearden Commerce is the creator of Deem(TM), the largest and most diverse syndicated commerce network that enables the syndication of highly relevant transactional commerce experiences across any online or mobile surface within the business-to-consumer and business-to-business markets. Deem leverages big data, social collaboration, semantics and advanced machine learning to optimize the exchange of goods and services between buyers and sellers, resulting in a personalized, white-label, one-to-one marketplace. For users, this means highly relevant and seamless commerce experiences and for merchants (aka advertisers), this means true performance-based advertising. Deem provides network participants with potential access to over 200 million consumers, 10 million businesses and a highly-diverse base of 1.2 million national and local merchants and generates revenue from its network via transaction fees and subscription licensing fees. Rearden Commerce, Inc. is headquartered in Foster City, California.