PandaPay saves 250+ hours every month and drives 4x productivity using Zoho Flow

About the company

PandaPay is a Canadian payment processing company that provides merchant accounts, card terminals, and point-of-sale solutions to businesses in Canada and the United States. They have clients across small retail shops and large businesses, and each merchant relationship involves ongoing service, which ranges from onboarding and terminal setup to compliance, billing changes, and day-to-day support.

The company operates with a lean but distributed team structure. They have appointed independent sales agents (ISAs) who work on commission to acquire new merchants. An inside sales team handles telemarketing and email outreach, while an outside sales team visits clients in person. A dedicated client care and client experience team manages post-sale service using Zoho Desk.

George Al Hajjar leads PandaPay's technology initiatives. His team implemented the Zoho One ecosystem for their company, with Zoho CRM acting as the core of their business data.

"Zoho CRM is our brain. It's our main tool for everything, and it was the first tool we implemented from the Zoho One package."

George Al Hajjar,Director of IT,PandaPay

The challenge: Native integrations weren't enough

PandaPay's support team handles a high volume of merchant requests, reaching around 50 tickets in Zoho Desk on an average day. Most of these are straightforward: for example, refunds, missing pieces of information, escalations to the payment processor, etc.

But there are a significant portion of requests that aren't that simple. They're complex, multi-step processes that can take days to resolve and involve multiple teams.

For instance, in the case of a terminal swap, when a merchant needs to replace their card terminal, the support team has to coordinate with the terminal provider to prepare a new device, configure it, ship it, and add it to the merchant's profile. They'll then remove the old terminal, and return it to the processor. In the case of a change of business (COB), when a merchant changes ownership or restructures entirely, it requires updating the business name, address, license, and legal documents, communicating with the merchant to collect signatures and notifying the payment processor to update their database.

PandaPay initially used a native integration between Zoho Desk and Zoho CRM, which allowed the CRM team to see tickets linked to a merchant. But George and his team quickly realized it wasn't sufficient for the more complex cases.

"We had the native integration between Zoho Desk and CRM, but we found it wasn't enough. Some requests need multiple actions—checklists, back-and-forth with processors and providers—not just a single ticket. That's where Zoho Flow came in."

George Al Hajjar,Director of IT,PandaPay

The solutions

Turning tickets into trackable cases with Zoho Flow

To solve this, George's team enabled the Cases module in Zoho CRM and used Zoho Flow to automate the workflow between Zoho Desk and CRM.

Here's how it works: Each ticket in Zoho Desk has a classification dropdown. When a support agent changes the classification to a type that requires deeper handling, Zoho Flow triggers a workflow. It then looks up the associated merchant and contact in Zoho CRM, creates a new case with the correct type, and populates it with all the relevant information pulled from the Desk ticket (ticket number, classification, contact details, etc.).

The case is also automatically assigned to the merchant's record owner. This means sales reps can now track complex service requests for their merchants directly in Zoho CRM, without ever needing to open Zoho Desk.

"With Zoho Flow, the salesperson can see the request right inside Zoho CRM without ever needing to open Zoho Desk. The merchant, the case, the status—everything is in one place."

George Al Hajjar,Director of IT,PandaPay

George's team has also built multiple case layouts, including for client experience, client care, PCI, and relationship management, with structured checklists tailored to each case type. Each case layout has its own respective step-by-step checklist and also holds a link to the relevant how-to manual stored in Zoho Connect, so even new team members can follow the process without needing to memorize every procedure.

When the case is marked "completed" and "successful" in Zoho CRM, Flow kick-starts another flow that finds the original ticket in Zoho Desk and closes it automatically. The team no longer needs to toggle between systems to update statuses.

"Our team just validates the ticket and picks the right classification—Zoho Flow handles the rest. It creates the case, pulls in the data, links the manual, and even closes the ticket when the case is done."

George Al Hajjar,Director of IT,PandaPay

Training external partners without sharing internal access

PandaPay doesn't just work with its own employees. It partners with ISOs (independent sales organizations) that operate under PandaPay's umbrella but use their own branding, their own email addresses, and their own systems. These ISOs don't have access to PandaPay's Zoho CRM or any part of Zoho One.

These ISOs still need training on merchant applications, PCI compliance, and PandaPay's processes. George found that TrainerCentral was the ideal place to host this without opening up internal systems. The challenge was that each ISO has owners and agents who need different training paths.

In Zoho CRM, each ISO contact has two checkboxes: one to invite them to TrainerCentral and another to enroll them in specific courses. When checked, a workflow in Zoho Flow captures the contact's email, creates their TrainerCentral account (if it doesn't exist), and enrolls them in the right course (with different paths for owners and agents).

"The flows we built aren't technically complicated, but they've made a major change in how we operate."

George Al Hajjar,Director of IT,PandaPay

Across PandaPay's integrations, six applications are actively connected through Zoho Flow: Zoho CRM, Zoho Desk, Zoho People, Zoho Books, Zoho Recruit, and Zoho Forms, with TrainerCentral and Zoho Cliq in supporting roles.

Benefits and ROI

Before automation, every complex support request required manually gathering information from multiple sources, creating the case, filling in checklists, and going back to Desk to close the ticket.

"It takes maybe 15 minutes just for adding the information in the right place. Now, with Zoho Flow, this takes seconds."

George Al Hajjar,Director of IT,PandaPay

At 50 tickets per day over 20 working days, that adds up to over 250 hours of manual work saved every month. Tasks that previously required eight people can now be handled by two—a 4x increase in team productivity. And because Zoho Flow handles data transfer automatically, there are no manual entry errors.

"The work which had to be done by eight people can now be done by just two, resulting in a 4x increase in team productivity."

George Al Hajjar,Director of IT,PandaPay

The freed-up capacity has also made PandaPay's team more proactive. Agents can now communicate more actively with merchants, driving better retention and faster resolution.

"With Zoho Flow handling the data, there are no errors. The team has the right contact, the right merchant, and the right case details. They can schedule a call or send an email directly from the case without searching for anything."

George Al Hajjar,Director of IT,PandaPay

Looking ahead

PandaPay is currently launching its own dedicated POS system. Integrating this third-party POS with Zoho CRM is a priority, and George sees Zoho Flow's incoming and outgoing webhook capabilities as the likely solution. The team is also exploring ways to connect Zoho Cliq with Microsoft Teams for seamless communication with their payment processor.

For PandaPay, Zoho Flow has evolved from a simple integration tool into a centralized integration hub that keeps their systems, teams, and partners connected without adding complexity or headcount.