More Than a Profit, More Than a Process: Meet the Sertifi Payments Team

Mike Ryan, Director of Enterprise Payments

• Role: Manages the Sertifi payments team, as well as supports the sales and product team’s payment-related initiatives, in an effort to build the best product for our customers. 

• Background: Has 27 years of payment experience. Began working at ClearCommerce assisting big brands like Best Buy and iTunes to process payments online, as well as other payment-related ventures at ISD Corporation, Way Systems, Merchant Link, and Shift4. 

Dave Jenkins, Enterprise Payments Manager 

• Role: Oversees and handles all day-to-day operations and underwriting for SertifiPay. 

• Background: Has 18 years of payment experience working at Merchant Link and Shift4 on all sides of payment processing, including financial resolution, product enhancement, and gateway certifications and compliance.

Jennifer Ferrell, Enterprise Payments Consultant 

• Role: Assists customers with the adoption of SertifiPay across their portfolio by providing guidance on best practices, training, standard operating procedures, and ongoing support. 

• Background: Has over 20 years of customer-facing payment experience working at US Bank and Elavon, specializing in financial advisory and payment technologies and providing global hospitality brands, property management groups, and integrated partners with the best payment solutions possible. 

Blake Rossmiller, Payments Specialist 

• Role: Assists with onboarding new accounts and responding to customers’ chargeback disputes. 

• Background: Has experience working as a financial analyst on the card issuing side, offering credit-building solutions with a background in credit card processing.

Mike: Volume is growing because we are solving a major issue for hoteliers and are educating more hoteliers on how dire of a change is in order. 

Sometimes, hoteliers collect payments by manually entering their client’s payment details through their front desk or property management system, which is frowned upon by the credit card brands because of the cost and the almost nonexistent level of security. To drive merchants to use more secure channels, they have decided to penalize manual transactions by providing less chargeback liability protection and increasing the processing fees associated with manual transactions. 

We offer secure solutions, better chargeback liability protection, and a way to save on processing costs.

Dave: To give you a clearer idea of the growth, we’ve seen a 34% increase in customers from May 2024 to now (September 2024) alone. That's a lot of properties and hospitality companies happy to be using us. So, our team has also been growing to provide the best support possible. All hands on deck!

Jennifer: I think that general payment knowledge is really critical for customers because the decisions that they make related to payments directly affect their bottom line. A lack of awareness about payment nuances leads to increased vulnerability, unnecessary fees, and even worse, preventable chargebacks. 

Blake: Agreed – the better understanding customers have of how payments work, the more savings they can see. Like Mike mentioned, even little things like how they enter credit card information or how they send and receive payments matter. By conducting those processes correctly, our customers can increase their savings and minimize their risk of receiving chargebacks. 

Mike: I’ve said this many times over my entire career: there’s an interesting paradox when it comes to payments that involves understanding both sides of the same coin. We all have credit cards and know how to pay with them, but very few people understand how the payment process works behind the scenes. With experts like us in your corner, it’s easier to navigate those waters and maximize efficiency. Otherwise, you’ll drown in chargebacks and downgrade fees.

Mike: If our team does our job right, we will forever change the way that payments are processed in the hospitality industry. I truly believe that because the lodging industry is in such need of a revolution – and this is the second time that I’ve done this – we have the opportunity to revolutionize the way that payments are accepted in the lodging industry and create better outcomes for hotels. We understand the rules of the game, and we can help our customers play within those rules to create advantages for themselves. 

Dave: If hospitality businesses use us correctly and use everything we have to offer, they save money and drastically reduce their chargeback risk, simple as that. No one can fully get rid of chargebacks, but you can certainly prevent them. As Mike mentioned, hotels without Sertifi are manually entering payment details at their front desk, and that is one of the most expensive transactions fee-wise in the payment industry, plus there is no chargeback protection because of how insecure that method is. By using Sertifi, you're ensuring security with an e-commerce transaction, and you have our tools to prevent fraud, which can have a dramatic impact on your savings. 

Blake: I’ll also add that we offer a pretty comprehensive list of benefits that aren’t offered by other companies that are trying to fulfill the same needs we do. One thing in particular is our chargeback response process. Other companies may say that they offer the same amount of support, but then they outsource a portion of the process to one or multiple third parties, breaking up the communication process and the potential for efficiency. 

At Sertifi, we offer a personalized touch that includes meeting with property staff members and walking through the chargeback process with them step by step to gather as much information as possible to dispute the chargeback and see success. But we don’t just help customers fight chargebacks; once we find the source of the issue, we help them understand the problem and provide guidance on how to change their operations to prevent future vulnerabilities.

Mike: We offer a lot of guidance upfront and show a lot of support throughout the onboarding process, but I want to emphasize the tools and services Blake mentioned we provide when it comes to disputes and chargebacks. My team takes a very, very hands on approach to this. We provide notification with details. We do initial research to get a preliminary understanding of the situation. Then, we bring it back and present it to our customers and spend time with them to understand the specific circumstances of a particular event. And then, we literally write the chargeback dispute evidence that we send to the credit card issuer on our customers’ behalf. When we take this approach, we win 71% of our chargebacks, which is a really healthy ratio.  

There are third-party services that could try to help you do these types of things, but they cost thousands of dollars a month, plus a very large percentage of what you recover for those services. This is something that we provide for no charge. We are here to be advocates for our customers. We find that when you process payments the way that we do, you run into fewer chargebacks to begin with. It’s something we're really proud to offer to our customers.

Jennifer: I also feel like our team offers honest and open communication. We're upfront with our customers, understand their challenges, and work hard to provide effective solutions – whether it's speeding up payment processing, enhancing security, or optimizing the tools we offer to ease those challenges. We also offer training on best practices and fraud prevention on top of assisting our SertifiPay customers in crafting and submitting chargeback rebuttals if one occurs. 

Blake: The biggest thing that's top of mind right now is surcharging, which is an easier way for our customers to charge transaction fees and save a bit of money while doing it. We've been piloting our surcharging solution with a lot of our customers recently, and we've been getting a lot of good results and feedback from them. 

Mike: Besides offering surcharging and ACH, we're looking forward to helping our friends across the pond in Europe. We've done a pretty good job of meeting the market demand here in the US for ACH and surcharging, so I’m excited to see what we can do overseas. We will be adding additional payment processors in the European region, which will allow us to offer solutions like SEPA and BECS, which are roughly equivalent to ACH in the US. After that, we plan to offer alternative payments, like Alipay and WeChat Pay.