Competition sites provide an opportunity to win a unique range of high-end prizes for the price of an entry ticket. Providing a streamlined and convenient payment experience for customers using these sites is of critical importance to build loyalty and trust, as well as encouraging repeat business. We caught up with James Wetton, CEO, Golf Gear Giveaways to talk about his challenges with previous payment processors and the importance of streamlined and secure payments in the Golf competition space.
Can you tell us a little bit about Golf Gear Giveaways and how the business came about?
I started to play golf during the first lockdown, as many did. I come from a tennis background and when looking at the equipment side of the game I couldn’t believe how expensive golf equipment was. I knew there would be a load of golfers desperate to play with the latest drivers for example but just not able or willing to spend £500+ on a single club.
Giving people the chance to win the latest gear for less than £1 seemed to be a good idea. There are a few other companies in this space doing a similar thing, but we have by far the most realistic odds and offer more custom fit options than any other company.
Were you facing any challenges with payments before working with Acquired.com?
Yes – we were facing several challenges! As a competitions site I suddenly discovered I was no longer allowed to use Stripe and with no warning they closed my account. I needed to find an alternative provider quickly and ended up signing with a different payment processor who put us on terrible terms, had a very poor level of customer service, crashed my site with their sub-par (excuse the golf pun) plugin.
What were the key drivers when choosing a new payment provider?
Better rates were important but above anything else I wanted to have a point of contact (POC) at my payment provider to be someone who I could get hold of should things go wrong or if any questions came up. My POC at Acquired.com, George, has been absolute brilliant and couldn’t have been more helpful. He’s worked with my developer and dug me out of a hole on more than one occasion.
How important is having a streamlined and secure payment solution to you and your customers?
This is of critical importance to the smooth running of our business! As a competition site, building trust is important and have a reliable service that people feel is secure is a must. With Acquired.com we have had zero drops in service compared with at least one a fortnight with our previous provider. We have also been able to add Apple Pay to the site, giving our customers a greater choice of payment methods, and we are now paying less fees per transaction.
