For dealer and stock management software
Your DMS records the money. It can carry the payments too.
Synapto is the embedded payments partner for UK dealer management software. A reservation deposit on a vehicle, the balance on collection, the parts counter, the workshop invoice. Your software is the system of record for every one of them, and the payment happens somewhere else entirely.
How the money moves
The vehicle sale your DMS already records, stage by stage. Each stop is a payment your dealers take today, from reservation deposit to final invoice, through a provider each dealer arranged itself. We move those sales onto payments inside your DMS: each dealer is settled in full, and your margin is paid monthly.
Full accounts, no card processing.
Dealer software in this country is unusually complete. Stock, valuations, VAT margin schemes, purchase and sales invoices, service history, the parts ledger. Some of it has been running dealerships for decades and does the accounting properly.
What it almost never does is take the money. The deposit is a card reader behind the desk or a bank transfer read out over the phone. The workshop bill is a machine on the counter from a different supplier. The website has a reservation button wired to whatever gateway the dealer signed up for. Your product knows the amount, the customer and the reason, and none of the economics.
The commercials
What vehicle payments can earn your DMS
Most of your dealers already take reservation deposits and invoice payments, each through a provider the dealership arranged on its own. We move them onto payments inside your DMS, in your name and in planned groups of dealers, and build the deposit, invoice and payout products that keep them there. Each dealer is settled in full on every sale, and your margin is paid to you monthly.
Vehicles and machinery move few transactions of large size, which is exactly the shape where a payment layer is worth having and where a default published rate costs the dealer most. Your dealers get pricing agreed to their volume rather than a rate nobody negotiated. You get a share of the flow your software already governs.
- Your own subscription revenue on agreed terms
- A share of deposits, balances, parts and workshop volume
- Pricing agreed to the dealer's volume, not a published rate
- Revenue that scales with average transaction value, not just count
- Commercials in writing before you build anything
The rails
Remote deposits and balances at handover
Most reservations start with a phone call from someone who is not standing on the forecourt, and this is where the wording matters more than the rate. A deposit taken online is a distance sale, and it hands the buyer fourteen days to change their mind about a car the dealer has already taken off sale. A reservation fee holds the car without committing the buyer, which is exactly why the trade takes one. Your payment link can be either, and it should say which on the screen.
The balance goes on a terminal on the forecourt or on a link before collection. The workshop and the parts counter run card machines from the same provider, so the dealer principal gets one statement rather than three, and your DMS can read the whole picture back.
- Reservation fees and deposits as separate things, labelled as such
- Payment links from the record, reconciled by reference
- Card machines for the workshop and the parts counter
- Direct Debit for trade accounts and service plans
- One settlement, one statement, one person to call
The weight
Large deposits and how risk checks work
The failure mode in high-ticket retail is not the fee. It is a provider deciding a four-figure deposit looks unusual and sitting on it while a customer waits for a car. Underwriting here happens at onboarding, with the dealer's actual trade understood, so a normal week does not read as an anomaly.
Disputes and chargebacks come to us by name, not to your support queue.
- Underwriting done up front, against how the dealer actually trades
- No first-payout hold. Timing agreed with you
- Disputes and chargebacks handled by us, by name
- Merchant boarding and verification ours
From first call to first revenue
Book a payments review
Bring your dealer count and a rough average deposit. We show you what the layer is worth, in writing.
Scope the integration
Payment links first, because they need almost nothing from you, then the terminal side if you want the amount pushed from the ticket.
Board your dealers
New dealers payments-native from day one, existing ones moved at their renewal, all onboarded by us.
Earn across the site
Showroom, workshop and parts on one revenue line, with a named person looking after both of you.
Questions
No, and you should not try to. The lightest version is a payment link generated from a record you already hold, with the reference attached so it reconciles back into your ledger automatically. That is a small piece of work with no card data anywhere near your systems.
No, and the two do not touch. Your dealers are credit brokers introducing to a lender, not lending themselves. This is the other money: the reservation fee or deposit, the part of the deal not funded, the part exchange balance, the workshop and the parts counter. That is where the card volume actually sits.
The dealer. Each one holds their own merchant agreement and their money settles to their own bank account. We never sit in the middle of their funds, and your platform does not either. That keeps your regulatory position where it is today.
Often it is the opposite. A change of ownership is usually when someone finally asks what the payment flow is worth, and it is easier to answer that with a signed commercial position than without one. Either way we will be straight about timing on the call.
A thirty-minute payments review
Bring your dealer count and a typical deposit. We will tell you what moving your dealers is worth and whether we are the right fit, including if we are not.