Zotapay makes payments simple for more people with Salesforce

From credit cards and wire transfers to e-wallets and prepaid cards, there are now hundreds of ways to pay for goods or services online. Zotapay is on a mission to help people access as many of these payment methods as possible in the quickest and easiest way possible.

Zotapay brings together hundreds of acquiring banks and payment solution providers via a single application and integration. “Our gateway helps merchants access the payment options they need to reach new markets and drive growth,” said Avner Ziv, Zotapay’s CEO “With Salesforce, we can help global merchants to offer flexible payment options to more consumers around the world.”

Zotapay has already established connections with more than 500 financial establishments and it plans to add another 100 to its payment platform by the end of 2020, as well as around 500 new merchants.

“Transaction volumes peaked during the COVID-19 pandemic as more people turned to online shopping during national lockdowns,” explained Ziv. “With our sophisticated payment technology, merchants can offer multiple payment options at checkout, which helps to improve choice and convenience for consumers and minimise the number of abandoned carts or declined transactions.”

Adding new payment providers, however, can be a complex process, taking up to 12 months. “There’s a lot of due diligence involved,” commented Ziv. “With Sales Cloud, we can track every stage of the process from signing agreements to conducting integration or testing, which helps to accelerate onboarding times.”

Zotapay has also simplified the registration process for new merchants, which means they can apply for multiple payment options via a single online form. “Every merchant needs to be validated against different risk and compliance policies set by our payment partners,” explained Ziv. “With Salesforce, we can not only automate this process but also match merchants with the most relevant providers in their region. On average, it takes just 14 days to get a merchant approved by their first payment provider; it can be even quicker depending on the merchant's responsiveness and due-diligence findings.”

Zotapay utilises a number of solutions from the Salesforce AppExchange to support merchant onboarding and matching. “With Salesforce, we can plug in additional apps to help enrich and optimise our processes. It saves us time and money,” added Ziv.

Efficiency has been a priority for Ziv since he founded the company in 2015. His strategy has paid off as Zotapay’s team is three times smaller than that of its competitors, yet it is still turning over US$100m worth of transactions per month. “I wanted the right tools and processes in place from the outset. My aim is to ensure that no lead or client interaction is missed. Salesforce empowers our team to work more efficiently, with smarter processes and richer insights,” commented Ziv.

Maximising resources will be key as Zotapay continues to expand into additional markets. The company receives more than 200 new merchant leads per week, and can track every lead on Marketing Cloud through to conversion or closure on Sales Cloud. “We leverage lots of analytics and reports that help us to scrutinise our pipeline to better understand why we lost or won a deal,” added Ziv.

Zotapay can also track every activity that contributed to the conversion as well as the overall cost per lead, which it has got down to an impressive $25; the average for the financial services sector is $160. “With Salesforce, we can segment our messages according to the merchants’ vertical, see if prospects opened an email, downloaded digital content, or returned to our website, and slice and dice engagement data according to different regions and industries,” explained Ziv. “These insights help our sales reps contact the right prospects at the right time and enjoy more informed conversations.”

The marketing team uses a combination of Pardot, Datorama, and Marketing Cloud to achieve visibility for all campaigns across all channels. This visibility also extends to when a merchant goes live on the Zotapay platform. “With Datorama, we can close the gap between marketing and revenue generation by tracking the transaction value and volume not only for each merchant but also on a company level according to our targets and KPIs,” added Ziv.

Social engagement is a major part of Zotapay’s marketing strategy. To simplify the publication of content across multiple sites and multiple time zones, it uses Social Studio and Advertising Studio from the Marketing Cloud toolset. “We can publish centrally from a single calendar instead of performing individual site uploads,” explained Ziv. “We can track how many people respond positively and negatively to a post, which helps shape future campaigns.”

It also uses Social Studio to monitor conversations around payment trends and competitors’ activities, which enables the sales team to identify new opportunities. To help qualify the large volume of social leads, Zotapay uses Einstein chatbots to prompt conversations on Facebook Messenger.

Zotapay is also in the process of upgrading its Live Agent web chat with Einstein chatbots to help reduce the response time for questions from merchants. This will ensure that Zotapay merchants receive the very best levels of service, no matter what the time of day or situation. “Our customer service team receives hundreds of queries every day,” explained Ziv. “With Service Cloud, we can identify recurring questions and program the chatbots to provide a fast and accurate response via Live Agent.”

Zotapay has also created an internal knowledge base on Service Cloud for its customer support agents and has introduced automated updates from its development team on fixes and rules for routing queries. “A slow answer can be just as bad as no answer if merchants are having issues with payments,” said Ziv. ‘With Service Cloud, we can connect all the dots and empower our people to resolve queries more quickly and to work efficiently.” Ziv estimates that Service Cloud has reduced the resources usually required to provide 24/7 customer support by up to 40% at least.

To ensure it can continue to deliver an exceptional experience to both merchants and payment providers, Zotapay needs to plan for the future. “With Einstein, we can run simulations to see how different changes might impact transaction and revenue volumes This enables us to adapt our business model and make recommendations to our payment partners,” explained Ziv.

The integration between the Zotapay payment gateway and Salesforce is key to unlocking these and other insights. “With Salesforce Connect, we can amalgamate our financial data with our customer records, which helps us make smarter decisions to drive stronger growth,” said Ziv.