Issuer processing: How Tribe ensures pain-free platform onboarding & migration

We get it – onboarding and migrating to a new issuing platform can conjure up fears of disruptions, downtime and data falling through the cracks. To dispel these fears, our VP of Product, Alex Kelly, has outlined how Tribe makes the onboarding and migration process swift, secure and hassle-free for customers.

Moving house is often cited as one of the most stressful processes anyone can go through – and it’s no different in the payments world. When business growth means a fintech or issuer needs to migrate to a new platform, some of the challenges involved can seem overwhelming. Customers may be sitting on a stagnant platform that can’t generate new products or, conversely, lack the stability they need. Or their incumbent provider may be charging them for minuscule changes, which contributes to the customer not feeling valued as a partner. 

But some of the typical onboarding and migration fears can seem daunting and deter firms from migrating – ultimately hurting their growth. So, let’s look at some of these fears and dispel them.

Fear #1: The process will be taxing, time-consuming, and hurt our revenues…

For many payments businesses looking to switch to a new platform, a speedy and secure migration might be their prime focus. It’s vital that they add safety and knowledge to this list of key concerns. Indeed, the safety of migration – including all business and customer data – must not be compromised for the sake of speed.

Most customers looking at migrations will typically have 12-18 months left on their contract when they begin considering other options – and existing providers usually expect a six-month notice period. When switching to Tribe, new customers can rest assured knowing that we have a deep understanding of the capabilities required, and the ability to manage the process from beginning to end. This means the involvement of a company’s incumbent processor is reduced significantly, which takes a big burden off the customer’s shoulders. 

What’s more, our ability to demonstrate production stability and capacity to take on additional transaction volumes and scaling plans is immensely valued by our customers. 

Fear #2: There are too many technical hurdles to overcome…

One of the ways that we ensure a successful migration and go-live is by giving clients access to our sandbox system, allowing them to fully replicate a transaction before they sign with us using our simulations functions. We give them this access early on, so they can be ahead of the game when a formal project starts. They can have full access to test their APIs, view the portal, test the web hooks, and they can effectively simulate a live production and build their system out accordingly. Our customers can do all of this before they even get to the implementation stage, and the switch between sandbox and live is seamless.

We facilitate this by providing a wide range of touchpoints, including weekly calls or Slack access, so the various technical teams on both sides can talk to each other and work on interactive project plans.

While many providers serving the issuer side of the market offer some kind of sandbox environment, enabling the testing of APIs and web hooks, we are one of the few that provide a comprehensive sandbox on the issuing side. 

Fundamentally, the whole environment is built from the moment they sign an agreement with us, and we’ve conducted an initial technical discussion. We’re unique in providing that openness to a whole system.

Another customer benefit is the aggregation of products we can offer, all in one platform. Customers might have three or four incumbent suppliers for various products and services, but with Tribe they can consolidate that into one relationship. Risk profiles, 3D Secure, processing and fraud prevention can all come through a single integration pathway, rather than three contracts with multiple service providers. This eliminates the inconvenience and hassles of dealing with multiple people if issues arise.

Fear #3: We’ll be left to fend for ourselves during migration…

The client onboarding and migration teams at Tribe have all worked within the payments and fintech industries. They know from first-hand experience many of the questions and concerns that customers may have during the onboarding and migration processes. 

We know what the payment schemes like Visa, Mastercard, Discover and others require in order to switch over the endpoints for where they send transactions. They must switch where they send transaction authorisation requests to, and it’s done at BIN level. It’s literally an all-or-nothing situation.

We also know what third-parties like card manufacturers require, and the issues pertaining to them that may affect go-live. So, we have all these key initial points on the project plans, which are always addressed at the outset of any migration process – they’re not left until halfway through the project with the clients then fumbling around to try and find a solution. 

That’s why our teams go above and beyond to implement a migration game plan and deliver clear and frequent communications across whatever channels the customer prefers, alongside the more usual emails and phone calls.

Each customer gets a dedicated implementation manager, who is in constant communication and who organises and aligns every part of the onboarding and migration process from end to end. We know that customers dread being kept in the dark, so Tribe Payments ensures that they receive regular migration status updates to ensure a painless migration. Our experienced support staff guide customers through the entire process, every step of the way, so new customers can sit back, relax and experience a safe, secure and seamless migration.

The proof is in the happy customers

In line with our ‘customer obsession’ core value, we’ve made the onboarding and migration process as easy and pain-free as possible – and all backed up by friendly, in-depth, and ongoing client support.

Since we’re well-attuned to the needs of each of our customers, our service level agreements (SLAs) are hyper-focused on ensuring rapid responsiveness to all customer queries and issues. We also have capabilities for technical and commercial people on both sides of the migration to interact. We respect and respond to the different needs of those individuals; we’re attuned to how they want to communicate and what they expect in terms of speed of response.

In fact, our customer feedback shows that Tribe’s hyper-personalised support is one of the things that makes us stand out in the market. We consistently exceed customer expectations. That’s why our SLA and service ticket stats are so strong, and our customer product renewal rate is far above the industry average. 

Additionally, Tribe’s customers undergoing implementation now adopt an average of 5.67 products from Tribe, compared to 3.34 products from those already live, and both those figures have increased from 5.25 and 2.85 respectively 12 months ago, which speaks volumes about Tribe’s growth and future trajectory. Tribe also scored 8.9 out of 10 in our most recent NPS survey, a fantastic gauge of our clients’ happiness, and testament to how responsive we are to service ticket and SLA times, and clients’ needs.

The key point is we’re incredibly proactive as early as possible. What customers tell us is that previous providers are nowhere near as proactive, which is one of the reasons why they come to us. We know what needs to be done way ahead of anticipated go-live dates, customers don’t have to lift a finger. We do all the heavy lifting on their behalf to ensure proactive, painless and prosperous onboardings and migrations.