Overview & Process Flow
This section describes the different steps and procedures that GovNet follows to bring a new merchant on board as a client for payment processing services.
Merchant On-Boarding Process Flow
This process is essential for ensuring that the merchant complies with regulatory requirements, follows industry standards, and is capable of securely processing transactions with GovNet. Here are the key steps and components of the merchant onboarding process:-
The sales department plays a crucial role in ensuring the overall success of GovNet and some of the key roles are;-
Acquiring New Merchants: As GovNet sales team is required to look for potential clients who are to be onboarded to use the Gateway's services. This involves identifying and targeting businesses in various industries, including Government institutions, private institutions and companies, and service providers.
Assessing the Merchant Needs: Normally the sales team has to conduct joint meetings with the different merchants to determine how the gateway can best serve their particular business with the different options available such as Mobile Money, Bank or Card processing. This also involves stating the requirements of the merchant before onboarding.
Sharing Proposals & Contract Negotiation: Also one of the duties of the sales team is to provide potential clients with proposals outlining the fees, and terms associated with using the GovNet payment gateway. They also negotiate and finalize contracts with merchants. This involves addressing any concerns, negotiating pricing, and ensuring both parties understand and agree to the terms and conditions.
Research: GovNet sales team needs to conduct market research to stay informed about industry trends, other processors and providers, and emerging technologies. This information can help GovNet adapt and improve its services.
Once the merchants are done with the sales department, the legal department ensures that GovNet and its merchants operate within the applicable laws and regulations.
It's also essential in protecting against financial and reputational risks as a payment gateway. Some of the duties of the legal team are;-
Provide Legal Support: The legal team is meant to provide legal guidance and support to various departments within the company, including contract negotiations, intellectual property protection, and dispute resolution.
Reviewing Merchant Contracts & Conducting Approval: This involves the legal team reviewing and advising on contracts, agreements, and merchant KYC's to ensure that they are legally sound and comply with relevant regulations and GovNet's requirements from which they approve merchants on being validated.
Gateway Registration & Licensing: The legal team also plays a key role in obtaining and maintaining the necessary licenses and registrations to legally operate as a payment gateway in various jurisdictions.
Research & Monitoring Change in Regulations: The team also should conduct research and stay updated on changes in laws and regulations that may affect the payment processing industry and ensure that the company adapts to these changes, such as, PCI DSS(Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) Compliance, data protection laws etc.
The Technical department often referred to as the IT department is the core department for GovNet as its primary role is to ensure the reliability, security, and efficiency of the gateway's technical components. Normally once the merchant has undergone through the Compliance department, they are then forwarded to the tech department to start on the integration process. Here are the key responsibilities and functions of the technical department:-
Setup and manage integration processes: The technical team ensures all integrations with the different providers are done, setup merchant accounts using the details set in their KYC, assist merchants integrate the payment solution into their websites or mobile apps and provide technical support and documentation (such as API document) to ensure a smooth integration process.
Server hosting and cloud services: The technical team is responsible in ensuring that servers are highly available and scalable to handle peak transaction loads. This involves overseeing the hosting infrastructure used, assessing the cost for the cloud services, hardware and software best for GovNet gateway.
Software upgrades and updates: In the need to provide better services to merchants, the tech team needs to regularly update and upgrade GovNet's software to address security vulnerabilities, enhance features, and improve performance compliant with industry standards.
System design & development: The tech team also primary is responsible in designing, developing and maintaining the different GovNet software applications such as Databases, mobile apps, APIs and the different tools that ensure secure and efficient transaction processing.
Security implementation: The tech team ensures that all users and merchants using the gateway that their data is well secured from fraud (unauthorized access) by maintaining robust security measures to protect breach of sensitive payment data.
Once the merchant has been set up with an account on GovNet and is ready to start processing transactions, the customer care team ensures that the merchants get a positive experience while using the payment gateway's services.
They serve as the primary point of contact for addressing inquiries, and issues, and providing support. Here are the key roles and responsibilities of the customer care team in a payment gateway:-
Provide Transaction Support: Assist with transaction-related queries, including failed transactions, chargebacks, refunds, and reconciliations.
Provide General Customer Support: Assist in providing prompt and effective customer support to address inquiries, issues, and requests from both merchants and customers.
Assist in Dispute Resolution: Customer care helps to manage and resolve disputes and chargeback cases, working with both merchants and providers to reach amicable resolutions.
Assist in Record Keeping: Maintain detailed records of customer interactions, including inquiries, issues, and resolutions, to track trends, reports and improve service quality.
General Feedback Collection: Assist in gathering feedback from merchants to understand their needs and concerns regarding the gateway processing, and relay this feedback to relevant departments in GovNet for service improvements.
In due course when the merchant starts transacting on the platform, funds are collected by GovNet on their behalf in the different currencies and the department concerned with managing the financial aspects of the merchants is the finance department, and some of the key roles include;-
Approval of settlement requests: The finance team is responsible for handling the different settlement requests made by the merchants and providing approval. The settlement involves the actual transfer of funds from the GovNet's account to the merchant's accounts.
Account transfers: The finance department is responsible for initiating the transfer of funds from the acquiring bank (the bank where the merchant holds an account) to the merchant's account. Also the finance guides on how internal transfers (subaccount transfers/wallet transfers) are fulfilled by the merchant before the settlement is made.
Financial reports and reconciliation: The finance department ensures that the funds collected match the transactions processed, accounting for fees and other financial elements hence the need to make reconciliation between the transactions processed and the funds received. This could be daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly depending on the arrangement made by the department.
Outsourcing of Forex rates: In scenarios where the merchants are doing cross-currency transactions(Collections), this gives rise to different currencies collected with different processors from which at a later point, those collected funds would need to be settled to the merchant in the currencies that GovNet is comfortable in settling in, such as USD or USDT. So since that will be the case, merchants will first be required to transfer the funds from currency collected in (such as UGX, KES, etc.) to the currency (such as USD, USDT, etc.) that GovNet settles in and it is from that very point where the finance team needs to share the rates from the third-party provider (forex exchanger) to the merchant to complete the transfer or settlement request.
Discrepancy Resolution: If discrepancies or issues arise during the settlement process, or transfer process the finance department is often involved in investigating and resolving them. This may involve working with other departments, such as customer support or the tech department to address transaction disputes in a mutual way.
Merchant On-Boarding Process Flow Diagram
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