Challenge

With over 40 years in business, Ohio Power Tool has grown from a single small shop in Columbus, Ohio, to a thriving ecommerce business serving customers around the country. The company still operates a Columbus brick-and-mortar store, but now in a building five times bigger than its original location. Despite its success, the company’s fragmented payment setup—which spanned a legacy payment processor and point-of-sale system, plus Adobe Commerce for ecommerce—created challenges for customers and internal teams alike.

Customers at Ohio Power Tool’s flagship store in Columbus faced long transaction times and frequent payment failures because salespeople had to click through multiple systems to complete a simple payment. Workflows that combined online and in-person transactions were even clunkier, if they were possible at all.

For instance, if a customer bought a product online and wanted to return it in store, they had to wait several days for their payment to be refunded. Ohio Power Tool also wanted to simplify the process of allowing customers to make partial payments over time, rather than paying for an entire order up front.

“We pride ourselves on excellent customer service, but slowdowns and errors from our old terminals often hindered our sales reps,” said Jay Amstutz, president at Ohio Power Tool.

In the back office, Ohio Power Tool’s finance team struggled with complex, highly manual reconciliation workflows. Payment data was scattered across systems and, in some cases, inaccessible from the company’s NetSuite ERP system, forcing finance team members to conduct manual workarounds.

In 2024, Ohio Power Tool decided to unify its payments infrastructure with the help of its longtime technology partner, Nova Module. Together, the partners sought to replace Ohio Power Tool’s legacy payment processor with a modern, developer-friendly platform that could provide a unified experience for customers and employees.

Solution

Ohio Power Tool chose Stripe as its new payments infrastructure based on the platform’s modern APIs, broad feature set, and ability to unify in-person and online transactions. The company also decided to implement Nova Module’s PayPack, a no-code, same-day integration solution that connects Stripe to its NetSuite ERP.

Ohio Power Tool replaced its legacy online payment processor with Stripe Payments. And using Stripe’s prebuilt plugin for Adobe Commerce, Ohio Power Tool’s internal team was able to integrate Payments into its ecommerce platform independently.

With its Payments integration, Ohio Power Tool deployed Adaptive Acceptance, which uses AI to optimize authorization requests for issuers, and network tokens, which helps to avoid declines due to outdated credentials by updating customer payment information if any underlying card data changes. The company also implemented 3D Secure authentication, which verifies that the purchaser is the legitimate cardholder, and Stripe Radar, which helps to improve security and prevent fraud by using AI to identify probable fraudulent payments.

To modernize the customer experience, Ohio Power Tool chose Stripe Terminal, which enables businesses to accept in-person payments through various methods and integrate online and in-person payments. Ohio Power Tool opted for Stripe Reader S700 to accept card payments through a customizable interface.

To connect Stripe, Adobe Commerce, and NetSuite ERP, Nova Module implemented its prebuilt PayPack product alongside custom integration workflows. Ryan Lee, head of product at Nova Module, explained that Stripe’s API made it easy to enhance data flows necessary to integrate in-store and online payment processing with Ohio Power Tool’s ERP, such as passing bidirectional transactional data between Stripe and NetSuite.

“The documentation is very clear and interactive,” said Lee. “It enables organizations and partners to tackle technical and business challenges by proactively providing a roadmap to success.”

By using Stripe and PayPack, Ohio Power Tool gained a cohesive view of all transactions—no matter where they originated. With accurate, comprehensive transaction data in NetSuite, salespeople could serve customers more effectively and finance teams could operate more efficiently.

Results

Terminal decreased payment failures, expedited in-person transactions by 50%, and simplified returns

Stripe Terminal eliminated multiple steps with the in-person checkout workflow, decreasing payment failures by 80% and speeding up transaction times by 50%. With in-person and online transaction data unified in NetSuite, salespeople can also now refund customer payments directly at the point of return—regardless of where the product was purchased—rather than having customers wait several days to receive a refund.

“As a result of this enhanced service speed and reliability, we saw an uptick in positive reviews,” said Amstutz.

Unified Stripe payment system enabled partial payments with accurate accounting

Integrating Stripe for both online and in-person transactions allowed Ohio Power Tool to accept partial payments across channels. For instance, a customer can now make an initial payment in person, then pay the remaining 75% online through Stripe. With Stripe, Ohio Power Tool’s accounting team now has access to up-to-date charge data, which lets them automate workflows related to recognizing revenue and calculating cash flow.

New, integrated system saved the finance team eight hours per week

With data flowing smoothly from Ohio Power Tool’s sales channels into NetSuite, Nova Module condensed and automated key finance workflows, improving accuracy and significantly reducing manual effort. The finance team now spends eight fewer hours per week on workflows that were previously disjointed, manual, and error-prone.

About Partner

Nova Module empowers businesses of all sizes—from startups to global enterprises—with cutting-edge expertise and innovative solutions, enabling them to achieve their global vision and sustain long-term growth.