E-commerce payments

Golf Central is a large Nova Scotia-based golf equipment retailer. We originally started with a simple payment processing offering, but ended up replacing their entire point-of-sale technology and integrating this alongside building an up-to-date e-commerce site to bring the retailer online, with all the requisite payment gateways as well as monitoring software. In conjunction with this, we set up their digital gift card and loyalty program. All of this enabled the retailer to more effectively manage their operations, significantly drive sales and improve customer retention.

In February 2021 we were referred to Golf Central through one of our referral partners (Tim Blais of Gateway Business Brokers). Although this was an established business with previous owners we were connected to a new business owner buying the business. The new owner Sean Connors definitely has a passion for golf but does not come from a retail background. Graham reached out to Sean to introduce SONA and also updated the partner.


Graham MacDonald who is one of SONA’s inside account representatives took his time through the discovery process to learn as much as he could about the overall technology solution in the business. Through his discovery he learned the following things:

Merchant location had been with a major provider for several years under their buying group program with the Canadian Golf Association. (Interchange plus 0.07%).
Their payment devices were not integrated to the current POS system.
The POS system the location was using was a ‘legacy’ based POS system using a windows architecture with a back office server. Through a series of other questions around the customer’s pain points of the POS, Graham learned that reporting and inventory control were both issues.
Graham asked about online presence and strategy and learned that the location was using a basic Wix website with no online e-commerce presence. As an example, the merchant showcased supplier’s equipment with links to those supplier’s sites where the customer could ultimately purchase their equipment from the suppliers directly.
Graham asked about Gift and Loyalty programs at the location only to learn they had a paper gift certificate program only.
Further discussion with the client led to a focus on their accounting needs. Graham learned that the client was using Quickbooks online and was looking for the easiest way to reconcile sales data.

The vast majority of merchant service companies would have stopped the qualification at what processor the merchant was using and asked for a merchant statement to complete a competitive cost comparison (of which there would be little overall margin based on the existing association deal the merchant had in place), but SONA do things differently…

Graham proceeded to take the information he was given and begin his research. He didn’t have the solution immediately after qualifying the merchant, but he was committed to finding a better overall solution.

So what did Graham come back with for this merchant?

Graham collected Merchant Statements from the merchant and completed an overall cost comparison and basically ‘matched’ the existing merchant pricing from their existing provider. He did not beat the pricing. He matched it.

Graham provided a full demonstration of the Clover system whereby he demonstrated the added features and functionality of Clover versus the existing devices. This included cloud-based reporting, email and text receipts, back up SIM card capabilities and enhanced third party applications which are available via the Clover App Marketplace.

Graham took this opportunity to discuss the benefits of integrating the payment devices with the Point of Sale. As transaction totals are fed from the POS directly to the payment device it eliminates human error thus saving the owner time and money during their reconciliation process.

Graham created and sent a referral to one of our POS partners (Vend POS). Vend was able to address the merchant’s issues around Inventory control and reporting and introduce a cloud-based POS. Once again, being-cloud based, this provided the owner the ability to review their business anywhere to be able to make market changes on the fly. As Vend integrates with Clover this creates additional value.

Through Graham’s qualification process and being in the middle of Covid, he quickly discovered that the client agreed they needed an online strategy. Through our channel partner agreement with Big Commerce, Graham sent a referral to them and began helping the client build a new Big Commerce e-commerce site. Once again, the ability to integrate the pieces of the client’s ecommerce business to their physical store were crucial. Big Commerce fully integrates to Vend POS so the merchant receives accurate inventory reconciliation from the website to the store.

In addition to the creation of the new website on Big Commerce, Graham assisted the merchant by setting up a new gateway account with Authorize.net so the merchant could transact sales via their online store.

Recognizing that reporting and financial reconciliation was important, Graham quickly assessed that an electronic Gift Card program that was fully integrated with the Point of Sale would be an added benefit for the merchant versus the ‘manual’ Gift Certificates the merchant was using previously. In addition to this, Vend offers its own loyalty program to incentivize customers to return and accumulate points. Graham demonstrated how this program would help the client accumulate analytic data on its customers and incentivise them to return as a local supplier.

Through Graham’s qualification of the merchant early, it was learned the owner’s wife was doing the financial accounting for the business and was using Quickbooks Online. Vend POS has an interface to Quickbooks so sales and inventory data is synced automatically on a daily or weekly basis. This saves the client a large amount of time as they do not need to upload these reports on a daily basis.