Canadian Electronic Funds Transfer (Canada EFT Processing) provides a convenient and cost-effective solution for managing Canadian ACH or e-check transactions.
Canadian EFT processing or Canada ACH Processing allows Canadian-based businesses the ability to debit checking accounts for one-time or recurring payments. It is important to note that in contrast to credit cards, cross border payments are not available, meaning funds are collected and settled in the same denomination. So a US company looking to debit Canada customer’s would need a Canadian bank account to settle funds into.
In the US there are many providers that offer an ACH processing solution. For EFT Processing in Canada your options are much more limited as a handful of banks control the payments ecosystem. It can often be difficult to gain access to the Canada EFT processing capabilities.
By partnering with Agile Payments you can leverage an easy to implement solution to debit or credit Canadian bank accounts electronically. This dramatically reduces time and money spent on payment collection.
Integrating Canada EFT Processing or Canada ACH processing as a stand alone or in conjunction with US ACH processing offers SaaS platforms a way to automate the payment collection and reconciliation process. A single system to manage both U.S. and Canadian e-check transactions and reporting data for reconciliation can be a powerful customer acquisition tools as well as a payment revenue generator.
For SaaS platforms initiating recurring payments or one-time payments from your application you make your end users business life more efficient and profitable as well as make your app more valuable.
Key Benefits and Features of our Electronic Funds Transfer Canada Platform:
For SaaS platforms, Canadian ACH Integration offers a pathway to create a more useful and sticky end-user solution as well as generate new revenue streams.
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For many organizations the on-boarding process is extremely important. To simply have an ACH integration option may not be enough. Many organizations prefer for the on-boarding process to be a “white label” process, where the third party ACH processor remains in the background. This means the EFT integration must provide a way for the organization to pass their merchant’s data that is required by the EFT or ACH processor’s underwriting department – ideally with everything in electronic format, including signatures.
This means the Electronic Funds Transfer Canada API must provide the ability for the application and underwriting process to be presented on their website, as though the ACH payments solution is coming from them, pass the underwriting data to the processor, notify the parties involved where the application stands and pass API credentials to the applicant user once the merchant application has been approved and enrolled. In some cases the credentials are passed to the merchant themselves in the case a SaaS application requires the merchant user to enter API credentials themselves, and in other cases the API credentials are passed to the SaaS organization for entry oh behalf of the merchant. It all depends on the Canadian ACH integration path that the SaaS organization chose.
A large Winnipeg based security/alarm dealer in the medical alert field transitioned to a business management platform with an integrated payment solution.
An Canadian EFT payment solution was mandatory as it offers both reliable and economical payment processing as well as significantly lower payment decline rates compared to credit cards.
That’s just a start at some of the common questions you might ask. With Agile Payments, we take the time to learn your business requirements and needs first. We have ACH app clients in sectors that span a wide spectrum. In every case we have become a valuable and trusted partner to these providers–to the point where we help in other business areas [eg client acquisition strategies]
For some organizations where easy onboarding is paramount and the goal is to have clients enrolled and processing payments thoughts should be given to Canadian Payment Aggregation or Canadian Payment Facilitation [PayFac].
A Payment Aggregator or Facilitator [Payfac] can be thought of as being a Master Merchant-facilitating credit and debit card transactions for sub-merchants within their payment ecosystem. Becoming a PSP [Payment Service Provider] lends itself well to some businesses that fall into the software provider classification. Some well known payment aggregators or Payment Service Providers [PSP’s] are PayPal, Stripe and Square.
Speed of boarding process: Being a Canadian Payment Facilitator allows you the ability to setup sub-merchants very quickly, removing a choke point to new client acquisition.
Revenue is derived from the difference in buy rate from the processing networks and the sell rate charged to the end customer. For illustration, if a Payment Facilitator knows their true overall cost amounts to 2.4% of processed volume and they sell at 2.9% their margin is .5% of dollars processed. If they process $10,000,000 per day that works out to $50,000 in revenue per day. Very attractive business model and you might say sign me up.
There are of course downsides. These include integration and compliance costs as well as risk mitigation. If you are interested in learning more about Canadian Payment Aggregation contact us.
As previously mentioned, that Canadian banking ecosystem is tightly controlled, and while some companies have enough clout and credit-worthiness to be allowed to process EFT transactions through their banking partner, the communication systems and processes that Canadian banks provide are extremely limited. Almost always this means a batch file specification for sending and receiving reporting data.
In many cases the Canadian bank will refer the originating client to use a third party software that is PC based that is not well supported. Being PC based, this option opens up a number of security concerns for the originating client.
To the contrary, agilepayments.com provides API integration communication with the ability to employ webhooks that can automate the reporting process. All stages of the transactions originated can be updated to the originating client’s software platform in near real-time.
Here at Agile Payments we listen to each SaaS ISV’s needs and try to come up with the solution that best meets the needs for a given ISV’s needs.
In many cases the solution amounts to a Payments Partnership for Canadian EFT processing. The partnership can include a white label experience for the application and onboarding experience, yet leave the ISV aside for having any processing risks.
Another key area for potential EFT partnerships is revenue share. We try to arrange for a profitable revenue share by creating a buy rate that an ISV can’t typically acquire and share equally is revenues.
EFT stands for Electronic Funds Transfer and is the Canadian equivalent of the ACH network
Although they function very similarly there are some technical differences. In the US, the bank routing # is always 9 digits while in Canada the routing # is 8 digits. The other important difference is that in the US many banks offer ACH origination. In Canada there are 5-7 BIG banks that tend to control the payments ecosystem
For the most part they are similar but usually you pay a bit more in Canada eg 35 cents rather than 25
No. There is no cross-border payment functionality (currency conversion). You must receive your $ in a Canadian bank account
