This article is relevant if you use NetSuite and would like your customers to make payments over the web and connect them to your bank or financial institution.
Background
Given its capacity to address global business requirements, NetSuite has been evolving its platform to be more open to working with financial institutions. NetSuite offers two primary technologies to help their customers accept payments:
- Electronic Bank Payments: a framework to produce bank payment files to pass to financial institutions. The framework offers templates and is flexible so that files can be crafted for distribution to drive payment solutions. Click to get more background information on NetSuite Electronic Bank Payments.
- SuitePayments: a framework for payment gateway companies to seamlessly integrate with NetSuite. This framework is not exposed to end customers but instead creates a uniform way to activate multiple payment gateways in a NetSuite configuration. Click to get more background information on NetSuite SuitePayments.
For those US-based NetSuite customers that have been on the platform for some time, NetSuite offered an Automated Clearing House (ACH) service to process payments via a Coastal Software & Consulting integration. As those customers now know, NetSuite has been working to deprecate that pre-built integration in favor of using the more open and consistent Electronic Bank Payments framework.
Naturally, those NetSuite customers connected with the Coastal Software & Consulting ACH model are now concerned because they need to migrate from the old (all behind the scenes) approach to the new (framework is exposed) approach. Fortunately, Coastal Software & Consulting is providing a bundle and a roadmap to assist the process.
The power of working with the NetSuite-provided frameworks means that it opens up capacities and lowers costs to produce more choices for payment acceptance. Indeed, Coastal Software & Consulting is offering ACH services. But virtually all banks offer payment services, such as wires; thus, for those with the ambition, using these frameworks to drive payment solutions is within reasonable reach. For example, for one client, we used the Electronic Bank Payments framework to drive PayPal payments for their specialized accounts payable cycle.
However, what is missing is the ability to make it easy to expose all these payment technologies to the end customers. Here is where the power of the NetSuite platform and creativity come together.
Accepting Payments via the Web Targetting the Electronic Bank Payments Framework
The standards for helping customers make payments continue to evolve with the push to lower processing costs and increase convenience.
NetSuite is making attempts to offer up a customer web payment option. It’s simple, and use cases are limited. I wrote about it in my 2021 article,
Overcome NetSuite Payment Link Web Pay Challenges.
What we see is that our clients have more demanding requirements. They need to present not only individual transactions (e.g., invoices, sales orders or quotes) but they would like to present a customer statement and allow for end-user control over what can be paid. Sometimes, rules for convenience charges should be included. Only certain payment options should be offered depending on the subsidiary or locality.
We need maximum flexibility to mix and match capacities to drive the business model and processing requirements. Like legos, we can snap together functionality to craft an end-user customer experience and back-end processing practice.
Still relevant today, see my related articles on the subject:
- 2016: Accept Credit Cards without a NetSuite Web Site
- 2018: NetSuite Video Demonstration: Accept Credit Cards
- 2018: Accept Credit Cards in NetSuite via a Customer Statement
- 2018: How to Drive NetSuite Credit Card Acceptance against a Sales Order
- 2019: NetSuite Credit Card Payments with Additional Charges
Now that Netsuite has migrated from Coastal Software & Consulting legacy integration, my 2021 article, Accept ACH from Customers via NetSuite Hosted Website, can now leverage NetSuite Electronic Bank Payments technologies. So not only can Coastal be supported, any existing or new Electronic Bank Payments profile can be used to drive customer web payments. For example, we have clients using Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo and HSBC.
Any organization that has made an investment to get the Electronic Bank Payments framework working on accepting payments, or has committed to work with a payment gateway provider backed by SuitePayments, can now offer up a branded web payment option to their end customers. That is the beauty of the NetSuite investment. No one needs to ask or worry if the bank or payment provider offers up a customer payment solution. And one can avoid recurring fees for a solution due to our services and software distribution model.
Click on the images to get a feel for the experience.
About Coastal Software & Consulting and Bank Payment File Distribution
My firm is often engaged to help companies with their Electronic Bank Payments integrations. We drive those integrations to fully automate and provide extended capacities, including better statuses, approvals and workflows. Additional work is often required to produce the bank file distribution (data transfers to the bank). See related articles:
- 2020: NetSuite sFTP Transfers Made Easy
- 2022: Get Control and Work with NetSuite Electronic Banking Templates as Files
- 2021: Enhance NetSuite’s Vendor Portal to Drive Electronic Banking
Thus, while Coastal Software & Consulting is offering assistance, it often needs more refinement.
Drive Customer Web Pay Accept Payment Technologies with No License Charge
As a NetSuite Systems Integrator, we are different from other providers. Our philosophy is to empower our client organizations via our capacity to listen, model, and bring previous experiences to the situation to drive value.
Our experience is often illustrated by packaging software algorithms so they can be reused as an accelerator template to drive a tailored implementation. Thus, any NetSuite customer can leverage our Accept Payments Bundle without a license charge to produce a payment solution.
If you found this article relevant, feel free to sign up for notifications to new articles as I post them. If you have invested in integrated bank payments and wish to expose these capacities to your customers as web payment options, let’s have a conversation.
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Marty Zigman
Holding all three official certifications, Marty is regarded as the top NetSuite expert and leads a team of senior professionals at Prolecto Resources, Inc. He is a former Deloitte & Touche CPA and has held CTO roles. For over 30 years, Marty has produced leadership in ERP, CRM and eCommerce business systems. Contact Marty to set up a conversation.
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