MeigaSoft & MultiSafepay: transforming the fashion retail landscape with Velfix integration and seamless checkout
Q1: Can you tell us more about the 'reason why' behind MeigaSoft
A: 25 years ago, Francisco Montes, MeigaSoft’s CEO, was working as a programmer of ERP management systems. When the company he worked for closed, he decided to start his own business.
Initially, Francisco focused the company's activity on ERP systems, his core as a developer. He gradually diversified the products as the online presence of the business became more relevant, looking for more advanced solutions.
In Meigasoft, we integrated the first fashion catalog in Amazon Spain. As no catalog was connected then, Amazon made its developers available to us to incorporate everything.
Something similar happened last year when the marketplace Miravia contacted us to explain their project, asking us to integrate our customers into their platform. We are talking about sending them more than 250,000 EANS (European Articles Numbers). Currently, we keep working hand by hand with Spartoo and Zalando.
We even did a pilot test in Europe with Zalando, for the mass creation of our customers' items on their marketplace. We collaborated with Privalia, Rakuten, Ebay at the time and many others over the years.
Q2: Working with the biggest marketplaces is key for any retailer, isn't it?
A: Sure. Keep in mind that we specialize in the fashion retail vertical, and we currently have more than 100 multi-brand stores that usually work with renowned brands.
Usually, the marketplaces contact us because our online strategy works well.
Well-known brands are the most sought-after and sold. We don't recommend our solution if a store doesn't work with top brands because it would not generate the desired return.
Our model is a SaaS service with all-inclusive monthly fees, no upfront integration costs, and no commissions on sales. We believe that it's a transparent and sustainable format for both our clients and our company.
Q3: Throughout these 25 years, what would you consider the most decisive or crucial moment in MeigaSoft's path?
A: The launch of Velfix in 2016, no doubt. It meant a meaningful change in Meigasoft.
Velfix is a 360° solution that allows you to manage physical, online, and marketplace stores through a single ERP management system. This remains a common challenge for many businesses.
In the beginning, we started with 8 retail stores, but soon, we increased the number of customers, and there was a real need for retail stores to integrate everything into a single system.
Every year, we integrate between 15 and 20 new stores into our system, a significant challenge for Velfix as a solution and MeigaSoft as a company.
Q4: What would you say is the competitive advantage of Velfix over other ERP solutions in the market?
A: On the one hand, Velfix is a native omnichannel platform and operates on a monthly subscription basis.
As I pointed out, the stores have integrated a single ERP management system, a physical store, a customized online store, and a connection to marketplaces.
This solves the problem of working with multiple suppliers, and helps to avoid errors in prices and stock, as changes occur in real time, synchronizing physical and online sales stock.
In addition, the development of Velfix has been entirely developed in-house, so our response time to any change or incident is much shorter.
For example, if Miravia changes something in its API in about two days, we already have the update integrated into our system. There's no delay.
In addition, the user experience is vital for us, too.
After-sales service is vital for us, and we like to maintain a close relationship with our customers. We provide the tools and support our stores' growth, continuously monitoring their KPIs.
We have worked with multi-brand stores for years and know the sales patterns well. When a new customer approaches us, we can give them a realistic idea about their potential sales and whether our platform is what they need.
Marketplaces are very profitable, and their scalability is indisputable; with just one button, you open a market, but of course, you must know how to manage them well and to and to monitor sales margins.
Q5: What reasons inspired you to choose MultiSafepay as a payment provider for your clients?
A: In Velfix, we've always looked for the most reliable fintech company for potential partnerships. That's because, from the beginning, it was clear to us that we would not handle payments directly due to the risks associated with security: fraud, sensitive data, PSD2, etc.
At that time, we were working with Adyen, but on LinkedIn, I came across MultiSafepay, which offered us the chance to develop latest ideas. You also had good support and a close relationship.
Talking with Manuel Mesa, the business development manager in Spain, I also discovered that our companies had equal profiles and similar modular solutions, even the same longevity, given that MultiSafepay has been in the market since 1999.
This allowed us to establish a strong partnership.
The test we did in Velfix with some customers had excellent results. Considering the outcome, its 360º integration in payments with different high-level modules, and their support, we decided to work with MultiSafepay.
Q6: You mentioned Adyen. What difference did you find with MultiSafepay to leap?
A: Adyen also has an excellent product, but it's a company with a different profile than ours.
The working processes are different, with extended deadlines, so the onboarding of clients took much longer, even when you needed to meet up with them.
Besides, forget about proposing something new. Adyen has its roadmap, and that's fine, but we needed another PSP model.
Q7: Your platform is completely self-developed, so the integration must be tailored. How has the whole integration process with MultiSafepay been?
A: Our experience with MultiSafepay has been exceptional, and the integration process has been entirely bespoke.
Velfix is a self-developed platform similar to Prestashop CMS or Shopify, so we needed a bespoke integration. MultiSafepay created the integration from scratch, and we incorporated it into our system.
We then started a pilot test in MultiSafepay's private test environment that we created, where we used our usual payment methods, such as card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and PayPal, using dummy cards facilitated by MultiSafepay.
This testing phase was highly effective and gave us confidence that everything would work correctly before implementing it in the real environment.
In addition, MSP's documentation is also clear, detailed, and constantly updated, which is a significant advantage compared to other providers. Also, our team of developers communicated directly, which made the integration process much more manageable.
When we started working in the live environment, everything went smoothly from minute one. We only had to make a few adjustments and polish a few details, but everything went smoothly.
The integration with our customers was incredibly agile. We responded quickly to their needs and developed the required specifications without significant setbacks.
MultiSafepay’s support technical team in the test environment has been very helpful, and their documentation is clear, detailed and up-to-date, so you can be confident that everything will work perfectly in the real environment.”
Q8: And how is the onboarding of your clients with MultiSafepay?
A: It’s simple. Once you sign up as a partner with MultiSafepay, you receive your partnerlink, but it is also available over API.
Then, when we have a new customer, we send this partnerlink. Through our link, they sign up with MultiSafepay as a merchant. The merchant's business needs MultiSafepay's approval, and after that, from Velfix, we integrate the payment solution of MultiSafepay in the checkouts.
We have several types of customers. The ones who contact us are mostly experienced businesses with issues with the integration of all their sales points. They need to learn how to manage everything.
Q9. Would you say that your user experience and your customers' experience has improved with MultiSafepay?
A: Yes, of course it has. As I said, you give excellent support and a smooth integration with us when we integrate the checkout with our customers. We have had a few non-serious issues, and you have quickly solved those we have so far.
Even the costs are more competitive that other PSP, so we have a brilliant partnership on both sides.
We have improved our user experience since working with MultiSafepay thanks to seamless integration, outstanding support and a low rate of issues.”
Q10: Omnichannel is on the rise. The market demands a unified commerce system that integrates physical and online points of sale with real-time data. What are MeigaSoft's goals in this regard?
A: At MeigaSoft, we have incorporated omnichannel in the service we offer our customers with Velfix from the beginning.
Initially, we had to deal with some resistance from the stores, given that many of them needed to differentiate between customers in physical and online stores and wanted to keep data distinct.
After the pandemic and our insistence, they realized that no matter where the customers buy, they are still their customers. Even online sales can drive in-store sales.
The next step was understanding that all payments and transactions must be integrated. This involved a lot in terms of payments and programming, as we had to unify all customer profiles such as purchasing habits, delivery address, payment methods, personal data etc., which involved challenges such as data protection and duplicate information.
Now, one of our next steps towards omnichannel is integrating SmartPOS with MultiSafepay for physical stores, allowing our customers to have all transactions and purchase data unified in a single control panel, which is a great advantage.
Centralizing all the business allows them to save time and resources and aligns with Velfix as an omnichannel solution.
One of our next steps towards omnichannel is integrating the SmartPOS with MultiSafepay for physical stores, allowing our customers to have all transactions and purchase data unified in a single control panel, which is a great advantage”.
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Q11: Are there any expansion or market diversification plans for MeigaSoft in 2024?
A: This year, our key focus is the launch of Velfix 3.0 and migrating more than 100 stores.
Velfix 3.0 incorporates a unified customer profile with integrated data, a loyalty card associated with the customer's account, and full MultiSafepay payment integration, facilitating the management of physical and online sales channels from a single control panel.
Velfix 3.0 is our vision of moving our customers towards complete omnichannel, encompassing scheduling and payments.
To this end, we have also planned to incorporate POS for in-store payments with MultiSafepay, as we said. This way, we allow all our customers to access all their business data from a single control panel.
Velfix 3.0 incorporates a unified customer profile with integrated data, a loyalty card associated with the customer's account, and full MultiSafepay payment integration in-store and online.”
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