If you’re a payment company looking to enhance the way you generate payment reports, you might be facing the following challenges:
- You spend too long completing reports like the QMR and GOC, and ensuring accuracy takes up a lot of resources.
- You’re struggling to investigate discrepancies in your transaction reporting. You don’t have the ability to go in-depth and drill down into individual transactions easily.
- You need a transaction reporting solution tailored to the payments industry. Most reporting tools are built for multiple industries, making it harder to generate the payment-specific reports you really need, such as regulatory reports.
Many try to address these challenges by adopting an API (application programming interface), hoping it will bring faster transaction reporting, increased data accuracy, and more granular data analysis. But incorporating an API into your payment reporting tool might not be the best option.
In this article, we’ll explain why you’re better off with a tool that uses Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) to generate your reports instead.
Read on to find out more.
In this article:
- Why a software solution is more efficient than an API (for payment companies)
- Why use Kani to generate your payment reports?
- How Kani helped Transact Payments with their reporting
Want to see Kani’s capabilities for yourself? Book a demo
Why a software solution with SFTP is often more efficient than a payment reporting API
An API likely isn’t worth it for most payment companies for the following reasons:
1. APIs can struggle to deal with large volumes of transaction data
When dealing with millions of transactions daily, the sheer volume of data can easily overwhelm API requests. Even a brief disruption in your API (such as issues with authentication, endpoints, or webhooks) risks delays to essential reporting processes like daily safeguarding, leading to potential fines and reputational damage.
If the API does face a delay, you’ll be left waiting until it’s fixed or having to enter your data manually to complete reporting. This isn’t a good use of your time.
SFTPs offer the same ease of data transfer as APIs but with less risk of something going wrong.
With SFTP, one side (you) places the file in a designated folder, and the other side (your software platform) receives a notification to start the transfer. There’s very little to go wrong here compared to the complexities of APIs. The whole process is automated, so you can handle large volumes without manual intervention.
With transaction reporting software, your data is usable on the platform as soon as you receive it from the processor. This means less time spent handling data and more time focused on building your business.
2. Setting up and maintaining an API requires input from your tech team
Payment companies that opt to implement an API for any type of file transfer can quickly find their tech teams overly stretched.
Setting up an API can take several months, and it requires constant updates once it’s live. This can drain your tech team’s resources and leave you waiting on implementation. Using software that supports SFTP is much faster than setting up and maintaining an API. For example, with reporting software like Kani, you can get set up in just a few days. And once you’re set up with SFTP, your transaction files will automatically be sent to our platform, allowing you to complete your reporting without relying on your tech team.
You’ll also save yourself time: after the initial setup, you only need to log into the platform if there’s a discrepancy, freeing up your time for other tasks.
3. SFTP is as secure as APIs (while being more reliable and requiring less troubleshooting)
APIs are secure but often require ongoing updates and troubleshooting to maintain integrity, including managing API keys and ensuring endpoint security.
SFTP, on the other hand, provides a more stable and less problem-prone solution. It ensures that transaction data is encrypted and protected against unauthorized access, offering peace of mind without the complexity of API management.
While APIs and SFTP can be equally secure when implemented correctly, the straightforward nature of SFTP reduces the likelihood of configuration errors and security loopholes.
Software with SFTP file transfer makes processes significantly more efficient and effective, ensuring timely and precise reporting without the extensive setup and maintenance required by APIs.
Why use Kani to generate your payment reports?
Kani is the only transaction reporting software built specifically for the needs of payment companies. Our platform has seamless data sharing using SFTP, offering you all the functionality of a reporting API without the downsides.
Kani offers seamless data transfer, as well as powerful features to transform how you handle transaction reporting:
Reclaim over 150 hours a year, thanks to pre-made card scheme report templates
Accuracy is a significant reason to consider an API, as there’s less chance of human error. But this doesn’t necessarily mean your reports are completed much faster.
Creating reports like the Mastercard QMR and Visa GOC can still be time-consuming with an API. Card scheme reports are complicated, and getting them right is a painstaking process. Our research finds that compiling card scheme reports drains 150 employee hours annually. With Kani, you can reclaim this time and put it towards developing your business.
Our platform accurately automates data transfer and standardization processes, eliminating tedious manual entry. Kani is data-agnostic, so the platform ingests data from any source, such as card transactions, processors, banks, internal ledgers, or third parties. We integrate with over 25 processors (including Thredd) and are happy to onboard any others you use.
We have a variety of pre-made report templates that comply with regulatory and card scheme standards, including safeguarding, Mastercard invoicing, and settlement and authorization reports. With these templates, you can feel confident that your reporting is accurate.
Kani makes it easy to create white-label custom reports tailored to your business needs, generating them quickly and accurately without manual preparation headaches. Our team is always there to advise you on the most helpful report types for your business.
Gaining a full view of transaction trends and details won’t be a problem either. Our reporting platform provides advanced visualization tools, helping you identify patterns and investigate issues quickly. These reports already help our clients withstand regulatory scrutiny by providing reliable and accessible data for auditing.
Our intuitive graphical visualization tools surface actionable data for quicker decision-making. For example, you can effortlessly create pie charts to compare performance across online and in-store transactions to allocate your marketing budget accordingly.
To save you from constantly checking the platform, Kani offers real-time error reports. Instead of the unhelpful error codes generated by APIs, you’ll receive alerts via email (or even Slack) and be able to set up specific transaction monitoring rules to catch suspicious activities early.
Automating these reports saves valuable time while ensuring data is accurate and consistent—all without the complexity of maintaining a payment reporting API.
Find out more about what reports you can create with Kani: Transaction reporting: What payment companies need to know
Get deeper insights into your transaction data with hierarchical drill-down capabilities
More time spent manually putting together reports means less time on the most important work: investigating reporting errors, anomalies, or discrepancies.
Kani enables you not only to reclaim this time but also provides powerful tools to investigate any problems. The hierarchical capability of the platform puts you in full control of your data, allowing you to look into discrepancies and even drill down to individual transactions.
Staying on top of your reporting is straightforward with Kani’s platform, where you can find what you’re looking for in just a few seconds. Our effective and auditable reporting processes ensure you’re always prepared for auditors. With an audit trail tracking changes made to your reports and a sign-off feature that certifies the final version, Kani brings data accuracy and consistency for a stress-free audit.
Group sharing is easy: you can quickly share reports with stakeholders across your business, even if they’re not on the Kani platform. You can also allocate a case manager for reconciliation breaks or variances, ensuring it’s handled quickly.
Why should you choose Kani over other reporting software?
We designed Kani specifically for payment companies. While competitors might have similar features to us, they lack our expertise in payments.
For example, understanding the four-digit merchant category codes (MCC) from transactions can be borderline impossible without prior knowledge. With a generic solution, you’d see these codes in your transaction data but have to go through each processor’s guidelines to figure out what they mean. This can be a lengthy job when each processor uses different unique identifier codes.
Kani simplifies this process by using our intricate knowledge of MCCs to build solutions that categorize codes quickly and accurately, so you can always find the specific transaction type you’re looking for.
For instance, our platform can surface all transactions over £1k spent in UK grocery stores, and the specific payment method used (such as chip and pin debit card). Gaining transaction insights quickly helps to mitigate fraud risk without all the manual legwork.
How does Kani compare to other transaction reporting software? Read more: Account reconciliation software: what’s the best option?
How Kani helped Transact Payments with their compliance reporting
Transact Payments enables fintechs and financial institutions to launch card programmes across the UK and EU, servicing multiple markets with a processor-agnostic model.
However, handling data from various processors in different formats created significant reporting challenges. Managing this data was costly and time-consuming, requiring a more streamlined solution.
We integrated our platform with one of Transact Payments’ processors, normalizing disparate data and reducing manual intervention. Kani now saves their team significant time by categorizing and analyzing their transaction data automatically.
Since implementation, Transact Payments have switched many key processes to our platform for rapid compliance reporting and error-free reconciliation. The pre-made dashboards and visualizations also provide actionable transactional data insights.
Unlike an API, which requires extensive technical expertise and continuous maintenance, Kani’s user-friendly platform automates compliance reporting without tech expertise.
Here’s what Aaron Carpenter, CEO of Transact Payments, said about Kani:
“Not every challenge needs to be overcome in-house. If you can find a tried and tested partner to solve a problem that allows you to dedicate your time and resources to improving your own offering, then take that option.”
Generate payment reports easily with Kani
While an API is powerful, it’s probably not the right choice for payment companies.
Setting up and maintaining an API is too tricky and can leave you overly reliant on your tech team.
Transaction reporting software using SFTP allows for seamless data transfer without the setup and maintenance burden of an API. Plus, with Kani’s platform, you’ll enjoy rapid setup, unparalleled data accuracy, and robust audit trails—all tailored specifically for payment companies like yours.
See how Kani can transform your transaction reporting: book a demo.
