The Helcim Merchant Newsletter

Welcome to our fourth installment of our quarterly merchant newsletter!

Our ongoing goal with these newsletters is to give you an inside look at what’s going on at Helcim, and all of the new things we’re doing to help businesses like yours grow. Read on to find out what we've been working on lately.

The last few months have been challenging for everyone at Helcim as our Smart Terminal launch kept getting delayed (the team found me pacing around the office a number of times). When we first announced our new hardware in March, we aimed for a spring launch which we talked about in our Merchant Newsletter this past May. Unfortunately the months dragged on as we kept waiting for final certifications from the payment networks. But today, I finally have an update for you...

📱Smart Terminals are being shipped! 🎉

If you pre-ordered your Smart Terminal, you will be receiving an email with your tracking number. You can also watch the unboxing video below as well as the quick tutorial setup guides.

A giant thank you to our merchants for all of their patience, as well as those that agreed to be part of the beta. We’re so thankful for all of their amazing feedback we’ve been receiving, which has been extremely positive:

The WiFi connection is fast and very stable.
The big, beautiful and bright screen makes it easy for customers to use.
The built-in printer is fast and simple (because customers still love their paper receipts).

⚡New charging cradles (optional)

While we were waiting (and stressing), we kept ourselves busy by fast-tracking the release of our Smart Terminal charging cradles. These are optional, as the Smart Terminal already comes with a dedicated charging and USB-C cable. But some merchants (especially restaurant operators) wanted an easier way to move around the units all day and keep them charged, so welcome to our new cradles!

If you have yet to order a Smart Terminal, inventory is available to ship right away. Simply login to your Helcim account and click on the Helcim Shop on your dashboard to order more.

💰 Do you know about Helcim Fee Saver? You can now pass on fees to your customers!

I know that the Smart Terminal update above is probably stealing the thunder, but did you know that we also just released our Helcim Fee Saver tool?

With just a few clicks in your account settings, you can pass credit card processing fees on to your customers or clients when they pay online. If they choose to pay by credit card, the total processing fees for the transaction will be passed on to them. If a customer prefers to forego the fee, they can instead choose to pay by ACH - drastically lowering your payment fees either way!

Note: This feature is currently only available when sending invoices online. For merchants interested in having surcharging on the Smart Terminal, you can add your email to our internal merchant wish list to be kept in the loop as we make progress on this feature.

🌈 Additional feature updates

We’re also excited to share some recent updates to our merchant platform:

🟢 Level 2 data optimization to lower processing fees for B2B transactions

We shared at the end of June that the Helcim platform has been updated to automatically retrieve and optimize Level 2 data on your behalf for eligible transactions. This means when your customers use eligible business, corporate and purchasing cards you can qualify for lower interchange rates from Visa and Mastercard.

🟢 Speed Improvements for the Credit Card Summary Report

You can now pull data from the Transactions and Tender - Credit Card Summary report in under a second. To access this report, navigate to Reporting in your account and then select Tender - Credit Card Summary.

🟢 Better visibility and more details on card transactions list

On your card transaction list, you'll notice we now display the specific user that performed an action, like a refund or capture. We’ve also expanded your search capabilities so you can now search by Cardholder Name in addition to Customer Name.

🟢 Fees and deposits in your card batches list

For added visibility, you can now view Total Fees and Deposit Amount in your card batches list. If you need more detail, you can click into each batch to see the date of the deposit and how the fees were calculated using our Interchange Plus pricing.

🟢 Updates to the My Helcim User account settings

Reviewing your login details, turning on Single Sign-On or Two-Factor Authentication, and setting your Helcim PIN is now easier than ever and you can see at a glance which security features you have enabled.

🟢 New Chargeback tool (in beta)

We have updated the chargebacks section of your account to make it easier to see when a chargeback has been received, confirm what its status is, and respond. This section is currently in beta testing. If you would like to give it a try before it’s available for everyone simply reply to this email and we’ll add you to the beta.

So what’s next at Helcim?

For the fall, our product team is putting a renewed focus on our accounting integrations. Our Xero Accounting Integration is now humming along, and we’ve just added multi-currency support to it. We're also starting to work behind the scenes to improve our QuickBooks integrations and automate it, so stay tuned for future updates here.

As always, thank you for choosing Helcim for powering the payments of your small business, and enjoy the rest of your summer! 🌞

-Nic Founder & CEO