Utilities
It’s not easy being a utility circa 2011. In addition to a host of increased regulatory, political and economic pressures, utilities are seeing an uptick in delinquent accounts and collection agency activity, affecting their ability to make long-term, much less day-to-day, business decisions.
Higher commodity costs and tighter regulatory oversight has made looking at all available billing methodologies an imperative. As an example, advanced metering (AMI) solutions have the potential to not only complicate infrastructure capital decisions but also threaten to overhaul incumbent billing structures increasingly delivered by aging and largely overrun legacy IT systems. And although utilities in general have fought the good fight when it comes to making sure customers can pay their monthly bills using everything from online debit and credit cards to online or e-checking, industry research finds that even today 93% of all payments still arrive in a typical utility’s business office via the U.S. mail.
The common denominator in maintaining a utility’s long-term sustainability remains its relationship with its customers, not the least of which is giving them every opportunity to modify their payment habits to better suit their needs, as well as yours.
Partner with a payment processor that can handle all of your payment types while ensuring you continue to realize an optimal, consistent and dependable revenue stream. Our innovative, intuitive payment processing engine enables you to manage both your billing and payment processing requirements as easily and as predictably as your future infrastructure investments.
At Litle we have been helping businesses just like yours set up and process recurring payments of all kinds. Credit card, EFT, eCheck and alternatives like Paypal are payment types we offer o help give your customers the flexibility they want matched to your administrative and order entry needs. Our Litle Vault and tokenization solutions surround your relationship with your customers in richer data security.
Optimizing your interchange qualification is essential to managing your cost of processing. Typically, interchange qualification savings can pay for all of you other processing expenses. We also have the tools to manage your relationship with your customers. Prepaid and Affluence indicators, proven recycling schemes are some of the tools that we use to maximize the number of transactions and the life time value of your customers.
By reducing expense and helping cash flow we understand your current environment and are able to provide solutions that can dramatically help you to improve your bottom line.
Take The Next Step
For more information on payment processing solutions for utilities call 978-275-6500 or contact .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Publishers
The publishing world is changing. Like so many other sectors contending with the rise of social media, on-demand news and emerging platforms such as the iPAD — see Richard Branson’s iPAD Project Magazine and Rupert Murdoch’s “The Daily” Newspaper — the publishing industry finds itself at a familiar crossroads: publish or perish. According to this industry source, in 2009 more than 360 newsstand magazines ceased publication altogether. Ad revenue continues to plummet, to the tune of nearly 60,000 ad pages in 2009. Venerable titles like U.S. News & World Report have, as recently as November 2010, moved to an all-digital platform. 2011 may bring similar news.
Such developments require today’s publishers to reconcile fiscal efficiencies with vigorous outreach to subscribers using continuity and subscription-based marketing. Partner with a payment processor familiar with helping you optimize revenue while making it secure for your subscriber base to renew their subscriptions and keeping your circulation high, your inventory low and your ad rates competitively priced.
At Litle we understand that our success is directly tied to your successful navigation of these new paradigms. Change excites us because with it comes many new opportunities. Our feature-rich payment engines help you take navigate the new paradigm being created without you having to tap precious IT resources.
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We support alternative payment transactions such as eCheck and PayPal.
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We allow you to build your relationship with your consumer by providing the best in recurring payment solutions.
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We reduce your expense by integrating your website with our processing engine to reduce the risk and instances of data breaches.
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And we do it efficiently with the platform designed to maximize your optimization of interchange and network expenses as well as processing efficiencies associated with optimizing authorization percentages.
Take The Next Step
For more information on payment processing solutions for publishers call 978-275-6500 or contact .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Online Services
If there’s one constant in the B2B and B2C online services world it’s that its virtual borders continue to extend their influence and reach. Consider just these handfuls of examples:
Digital Goods
Global sales of e-readers such as Amazon.com's Kindle will reach 6.6 million devices by the end of 2010, and then jump 68% to 11 million devices in 2011 as it battles popular media tablets. (source: Gartner Group)
Online Games
The U.S. virtual goods market — including social games, online games, virtual worlds, consoles and mobile games is expected to hit $2.1 billion in revenues in 2011 (source: GamesBeat)
Online Data and Storage Backup
IDC estimates revenue for this emerging market to reach $715 million by 2011, representing a 33.3% compound annual growth (CAGR) between 2006 and 2011. (source: IDC)
Online photo/imaging services
Spending on photo publishing products was estimated to reach approximately $1.32 billion last year and is expected to grow slightly this year to $1.4 billion. (source: PMA Foresight)
Online Dating
The online dating industry, with a current worth of $948M is projected to grow to more than $1.2B in 2012 (source: MarketData Enterprises)
The other constant in each of these examples is each is a card-not-present (CNP) merchant.
We specialize in CNP, the most demanding of all payment processing environments. Meeting the payment processing needs of online goods and services providers is part of our DNA. In fact, Litle & Co. built its first payment processing engine to meet the needs of catalogers and other direct response marketers ― the first card-not-present merchants who were overlooked, overcharged, undervalued and undeserved by conventional payment processing methodologies and the predecessors of today’s digital-direct commerce.
We understand the efficiencies of integrated reporting, timely and consistent settlement and having outstanding turnaround time on your authorizations. We also understand that in the CNP environment that these transactions need some extra tender loving care so we specialize in:
Recurring Billing Excellence. Online services businesses need smooth, seamless recurring billing. Litle & Co.’s payment management engines include some of the most advanced recurring billing logic available today. We’ll give you the best tools available including Account Updater and Recycling Logic that helps you minimize billing interruptions which create additional customer service demands.
Interchange Management. We do not use interchange as a profit center. Some processors do. There is no incentive for us to qualify your transactions at anything other than the best rates and we always pass through the exact interchange rate for which the transaction qualified.
Dynamic Reporting. Reconcile quickly. Investigate deeply. All the intelligence you need—in a format that makes life easy for you. Benchmarking and analysis that helps you understand how your processing performs. Rich analytics that can tell you which forms of payment are working best for you.
Affluence Indicators. Analyze the buying habits of affluent cardholders within your base. They are more likely to have the buying power and the willingness to spend.
Prepaid Indicators. For consumers signing up for recurring or installment billing, incents customers to use their available funds all at once, spending more of their prepaid funds with you.
Value-Adding Solutions and Services. You are focused on converting traffic into paying subscribers. We are focused on supporting your conversion rates with tools such as real-time transaction processing and the right selection of alternative payments. Our Merchant Services Group lives your business and proactively recommends real-time process improvements based on analysis of your payment processing performance. They’ll suggest changes to your website that might facilitate more conversions. They’ll even help you determine which payment options are best for you and your customers.
By managing the entire recurring billing transaction for CNP merchants and providing deep dive visibility into an increasingly fickle customer base we help you to not only grow revenues, but also the means to ensure the quality of your customers’ online experience remains high, memorable and of course, repeatable.
Take The Next Step
For more information on payment processing solutions for online services call 978-275-6500 or contact .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Non-Profits
Evangelizing and monetizing people’s passions for your organization is first about the relationship you have with your donors.
Partnering with a payment processor whose history of advocacy in card-not-present transactions, ones increasingly important to non-profit organizations, can help you effectively respond to challenges, beginning with critical donor relationships. Our innovation, insights and experience not only can result in a deeper pool of sustaining donors, but can also fuel your ability to facilitate, grow and manage your donor base. As a result your donor acquisition costs are kept in check as sustainer revenue grows.
We understand the efficiencies of integrated reporting, timely and consistent settlement and having outstanding turnaround time on your authorizations. We allow you to offer the widest variety of payment types and options to contribute and we give you the flexibility to foster relationships that fit the needs of both your organization as well as your donors.
We also understand that in the nonprofit card-not-present environment these transactions need some extra tender loving care so we specialize in:
- Recurring Billing
- Interchange Management
- Dynamic Reporting
- Affluence Indicators
- Prepaid Indicators
- Value-Adding Solutions and Services
For more information on payment processing solutions for nonprofits please call 978-275-6500 or contact .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Multichannel Merchants
Most payment processors “specialize” in point-of-sale retail and dabble with an internet gateway for card-not-present transactions. At Litle & Co. we specialize in card-not-present, the most demanding of payment processing environments.
As the multichannel world continues to evolve, Litle’s alignment of services has kept pace. Whether your sales are over the web, the phone, traditional mail or in-store, ultimately, processing does matter.
We understand the efficiencies of integrated reporting, timely and consistent settlement and having outstanding turnaround time on your authorizations. We also understand that in the card-not-present environment these transactions need some extra tender loving care so we specialize in:
- Recurring Billing
- Interchange Management
- Dynamic Reporting
- Affluence Indicators
- Prepaid Indicators
- Value-Adding Solutions and Services
We understand that within the unique environment of card-not-present transactions we can not only mitigate risk, but also provide you with integrated payment solutions that support both your onsite as well as virtual presence.
For more information on payment processing solutions for multichannel retailers call 978-275-6500 or contact .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Membership Associations
The key to continued profitability is a dues-based ecosystem often dependent on manual intervention: writing annual (often more frequently)letters of appeal and reminders, setting up a back office operations to collect dues and assembling accounting procedures consistent with association requirements or, more likely, limitations.
In parallel there’s new member prospecting that, even if all goes exactly to plan, turns dues collections for both constituencies into a treadmill-like cycle of name-by-name outreach informed by a steady diet of snail, direct and email and tedious back office processing.
Partner with a payment processor whose services are precisely aligned to the needs of membership associations including:
- Recurring Billing Alternative Payments
- Interchange Management
- Dynamic Reporting
- Affluence Indicators
- Prepaid Indicators
- Value-Adding Solutions and Services
Association leadership and their staffs can then use the resulting savings in both time and labor to add even more value to their dues-paying members.
For more information on payment processing solutions for industry, trade and professional membership associations call 978-275-6500 or contact .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Internet Retail
The evidence is overwhelming, internet-based retail continues to grow by leaps and bounds.
Borderless, ubiquitous and convenient, it’s the emphasis on customer experience that will ultimately determine the success of an internet retail merchant. Not just in terms of product supply and demand or ease of website navigation. Rather, it is how easy customers can pay for their products or services — via their choice of credit, debit or alternative payments — and how secure their transactions and identities remain once the sale is complete.
As an internet retailer, your phenomenal growth may be hiding some inefficiency that we are experts in identifying, remediating and optimizing:
- Using a third party gateway for authorization capture could cost you an additional $.35 per transaction
- Not offering alternative payment methods, foreign currency, or installment transactions could be costing you 20-40% more orders
- Identifying affluence indicators may help you identify high-earning customers
At Litle card-not-present processing, the lifeblood of internet retail, is in our DNA.
For more information on payment processing solutions for Internet Retailers call 978-275-6500 or contact .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Direct Response
The spontaneous, pitch perfect requirements of direct response marketing demand a payment processing partner equal to the challenge of efficiently capturing transactions and closing sales on-demand.
Our time-tested solutions and platform are designed for flexibility to be more than capable of handling your creative and dynamic environment. Litle knows what you need for payment processing and we deliver.
Our payment engines are built with the systems you need to maximize sales at the time of order including:
o Real-time authorizations prompting the consumer for another credit card if the first one is declined
o Quick scaling ability to ensure that your consumer never waits for an authorization
o Automatic backorder processing that requires no consumer contact
o Detailed “declined authorizations” reports to give you the information you need to help close the sale
For more information on how we help serve Direct Response merchants read the call 978-275-6500 or contact .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Markets We Serve
The Litle & Co. payments platform is engineered specifically to meet the needs of companies and organizations in Direct Response (DRTV, radio, print), Internet and Multichannel Retail (including catalogs), Membership-based Businesses, Non-Profits, Online Services and Publishing. Any organization with card-not-present or recurring billing needs would benefit from working with us. Please select the segment that best suits your requirements and learn how Litle & Co.’s innovative payment processing solutions align to its on-going needs, market influences as well as its short and long-term challenges.
Practical Payments
Ten Approaches to Consider in Card-Not-Present Transactions
