Dealer-Pay and Dealertrack are collaborating to add payment tools to an automotive dealer management system.
The two companies have launched an integration that delivers Dealer-Pay’s advanced payment tools to Dealertrack’s dealer management system (DMS) users, enabling automotive dealerships to process payments in all departments, according to a Wednesday (Dec. 28) press release.
“Dealertrack’s focus on consolidated workflows and better buying experiences will continue to deliver shared value to our mutual clients,” Dealer-Pay President and CEO Julie Douglas said in the release.
Dealer-Pay’s payments platform is designed for automotive dealerships and enables users in all departments to process payment transactions in several ways. This gives customers inside and outside the dealership the convenience and flexibility of paying in person, via links in texts or emails or online, according to the press release.
In addition, because the integration works seamlessly across both platforms, it retrieves real-time data and makes payment acceptance faster, easier and more secure. It provides the customer data, the details of the repair order, parts ticket or deal and the amount owed, the release said.
To streamline reconciliation, Dealer-Pay links most transactions back to the Dealertrack DMS and provides an exception report for any unmatched transactions, per the release.
“The technology relationship between Dealer-Pay and Dealertrack is a series of application programming interactions designed to increase user productivity, reduce data entry/errors, mitigate fraud and reduce chargebacks in each department,” the press release said.
A growing number of automotive dealerships offer their customers the opportunity to pay online before returning to pick up their vehicles from the service department.
That solves the common problem of customers having to wait or find someone at the dealership who can help accept a payment. Today, when consumers have become accustomed to buy online, pick up in-store convenience, waiting to pay is no longer the experience they expect, Affinitiv Chief Product Officer Matt Rodeghero told PYMNTS in an interview posted in July.
“Paying for it is no longer part of the transaction; the transaction is just coming in, receiving everything and going,” Rodeghero said at the time. “That’s how consumers have started to think about it, so that traditional experience of having a cashier is not a modern experience.”