Cayan offers solid, easy-to-use, and secure merchant account services. It has created its own software and equipment to process credit card transactions and manage customer reward programs. Prior to its rebranding as Cayan, in 2013 Merchant Warehouse was named a Best Channel Vendor that same year, and in 2015, after rebranding as Cayan, won a Stevie award for customer service.
pros
Rates as low as 0.28%
Flexible - no long-term contracts
Multiple options for gift cards and customer rewards
cons
Tiered pricing system for transaction fees could be complicated
Businesses looking to expedite their credit card processing
Merchants who want a cloud-based, secure payment system
Businesses that want to implement gift cards and customer reward systems
What’s on Offer
With Cayan’s “Genius” countertop and handheld payment processing system, you can implement a wide variety of features, including:
Create customer gift and loyalty cards
Real-time online reporting
Store and forward offline processing
Line item display
Intelligent pin steering
Secure storage of customer data for recurring billing
Automatic updates
Customer behavior tracking
Will continue to work even when the network is down
Free application, equipment setup, and ecommerce payment setup
Genius includes what Cayan refers to as “hacker-fighting technology,” using tokenization and encryption to keep customer data safe.
Cayan also includes a secure online payment gateway that makes use of advanced reporting tools and automatic billing.
Application Process
Cayan doesn’t require any long term contracts and has a simple and straightforward registration for new users. On the Cayan website, new customers fill out their personal information and business details, followed by processing information and financial information, including bank details and routing numbers.
There are no long term contracts or cancelation fees. After signing up online, new customers will be contacted by a Cayan team member with a personalized price quote.
What’s Unique About Cayan?
Cayan is an all-in-one merchant account services that helps you manage customer transactions and credit card payments for your business with POS systems that can give businesses a real boost in efficiency and customer outreach.
The“Genius” platform is cloud-based, and offers a wide range of features and high-level security to keep your customers’ data safe. The system also includes a mobile POS device that is ideal for business owners who operate in the field and need a payment platform they can take anywhere. The platform is designed to be able to work offline so even if you lose coverage you can still carry out transactions.
Cayan helps users manage online payments for Ecommerce business, with a healthy arsenal of billing and advanced reporting tools that help you keep a birds eye view on your business at all times.
The company's MerchantWare virtual terminal provides customers with online account management as well as multiple logins for different users. You can also set up Cayan to email receipts to customers, as well as send out advertising material.
The system helps you organize billing and also makes it easy to create and implement customer gift cards and reward programs.
When it comes to setup, Cayan keeps things simple and affordable with a free application, free equipment setup, and free Ecommerce payment setup. There are also no long term contracts or cancellation fees.
The features and sophisticated platforms that Cayan puts to use makes it an option that works for companies of all sizes, unlike some competitors which specifically seek out only companies of a certain size. Finally, while the lack of consistent pricing information online can appear opaque at first, it means that you will get a quote that is custom-designed for your company.
Customer Support
Cayan operates an extensive online knowledge base where you can access information about all sorts of issues pertaining to using their products.
In addition, the company operates a toll free helpline and you can also send questions to an online form in order to receive an answer from the company. It’s worth noting that 3 separate customer service queries about pricing submitted online did not receive an answer 24 hours later.
Pricing (Software and Hardware)
Cayan doesn’t list its pricing information online, but rather develops custom pricing quotes for each customer.
The price you’ll be quoted depends on a wide range of factors, though overall the prices can be quite competitive. This can include retail transaction fees of around $0.21 per sale and $0.19 per sale for online charges. The company also touts discount rates that can range from 0.28% to 1.98%. No matter what plan you pursue, you will not be charged setup fees with Cayan.
Bottom Line
Cayan is a comprehensive platform for handling credit card transactions and managing the online and in-store operations of businesses of all sizes. The company offers tailor-made pricing plans for handling credit card transactions, and supplies countertop, hand-held, and mobile charge platforms equipped with the company account management software.
Cayan is known for being flexible and does not require any long-term commitment or large-scale investment to set-up. It is cloud-based and meets a high standard for security. The company’s software can be used to expertly run all types of customer reward programs and gift cards, and to send receipts directly to customers by email.
While Cayan can accommodate businesses of all sizes, to get the most out of it you’d probably need to run a business that will take advantage of all of the features - such as customer award programs or an Ecommerce site. If you have a smaller business that only occasionally needs to process payments, then better options may be found elsewhere, with transparent pricing that doesn’t require a custom quote.
Cayan refers to itself as “a technology company focused on transformative innovations in payments,” and it is a company that is expanding with an eye towards the future. The company was founded in 1998 and is based in Boston, Massachusetts. It was initially called Merchant Warehouse Inc. and officially changed its name to Cayan in 2015.
In January 2024, the company was acquired by global payment solutions provider TSYS for a deal that the company says was worth over $1 billion in cash.
Today, Cayan provides merchant services to more than 70,000 businesses across the world and employs more than 430 people worldwide, with offices in Boston, Belfast, and Scottsdale, Arizona.
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