Which payment gateway should you choose for your online business, if you want to be successful? This is a question that causes a lot of individuals to struggle. When everything is said and done, payment gateways and online payments, in general, might be scary, particularly if this is your first time going through the motions. Because there are hundreds of different choices available for making payments online, making a selection may be difficult. In this section, we will discuss the characteristics of a reliable online payment gateway that you should search for.
A payment gateway, in a nutshell:
A payment gateway makes it possible for anybody to move money from their bank account to the bank account of another person without physically going to a bank or submitting a check. The information on the customer’s payment is collected by the payment gateway technology and then sent to the acquirer’s account.
1. Select the Flow of Payment Process:
When it comes to your company, you need to select the payment gateway that works best for your requirements. Instead of going straight for the giants of the market, choose the company that can provide you with the greatest service at the most affordable cost. Check the payment form, the iframe, and the escrow system first and foremost.
2. Security Measures:
The safety of customer financial information should be an absolute top concern for any company doing business online. E-commerce fraud is a widespread problem that impacts a great number of online retailers.
If a company uses a payment gateway provider that has powerful security safeguards, both the company and its customers are protected from the possibility of fraud. In order to guarantee the integrity of each and every transaction, the most reputable payment gateways use a wide variety of security measures, including data encryption, tokenization, and secure socket layers (SSL).
Reliable payment service providers should ensure that they comply with the security standards established by the payment industry, such as the Payment Card-Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) or another standard of a similar kind.
3. Conversion Rates:
Increased conversions at the checkout are one of the most important advantages that a payment gateway that has been carefully selected can provide to online stores selling goods and services. The rate of conversion may increase or decrease depending on a number of variables, including the ease of making payments, the types of payment methods that are available, and even the layout of the checkout page.
Look to other businesses that make use of the same payment service for evidence that the payment gateway can boost the conversion rate of their customers when you are seeking to determine whether or not it is capable of doing so. You should anticipate paying something in the region of 2.9% plus 30 cents for each transaction on the most basic level. This is a general rule. Anything that is lower than that is fantastic.
4. The Forms Of Payment Methods Supported:
In the past, making payments online was often limited to straightforward transactions using credit or debit cards; however, these days, there is a wide variety of payment options available. Payment methods such as the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), internet banking, and electronic wallets are now being used by millions. Customers will appreciate the convenience of being able to pay for their purchases using a variety of ways also known as online payments when you use an appropriate payment gateway for your online store. This will assure a decrease in the amount of income lost due to bad customer experience as well as shopping carts being abandoned.
The most popular payment gateways in the world, such as Stripe, PayPal, Braintree, and others, allow a variety of different payment methods.
5. Efficient Checkout:
A poll found that more than 1/4consumers would back out of a purchase if they were required to sign up for an account in order to finish making the transaction. If the process of checking out employs a third-party shopping cart that already has an enrollment process integrated into the cart, make sure that merchants have the ability to make the registration process an optional component that enables “guest” checkouts.
In a similar vein, the payment gateway needs to provide merchants the ability to disable unnecessary form fields, which would make the checkout process much simpler. Large eCommerce companies anticipate that online merchants will increase conversions by removing redundancy. One example of this is asking customers to submit the same information for billing and shipping, even if the customer’s postal address is the same as the billing address.
6. Facilitate The Checkout Process Across All Devices:
Ecommerce business proprietors, as they consider various payment gateway choices, are obligated to provide a flexible checkout experience that is designed for a variety of mobile devices and kinds of network connections.
7. Integration Process:
The integration process for payment gateways varies depending on the kind of gateway. Hosted, self-hosted, or API hosting are the three options available for gateways. E-commerce systems like WooCommerce, Mozello, Magento, or others like them may also facilitate the integration of payment gateways for firms of a smaller scale.
It shouldn’t take too many resources to integrate a payment gateway; but, before selecting a service, it is necessary to find out what integration options are available to make an informed decision. The majority of them include public integration documentation that may give an overview of the procedure as well as the many integration choices they offer.
8. Establishing a Merchant Account:
If you want to be able to collect payments using an online payment gateway, you absolutely need to establish a merchant account. When a consumer makes an online payment using a payment gateway, the money is temporarily sent to this account, and then it is transferred out to a different store account. This is distinct from the bank account that is already in place.
Even while it may seem like an additional chore, merchant accounts provide an additional degree of protection and make it easier to handle payments for both consumers and sellers. Some payment gateways, on the other hand, do not call for the use of a merchant account and instead send the money straight to the account of the seller. Payment gateways have the ability to levy a higher processing fee in these kinds of circumstances.
9. Enabling a Widespread Audience:
Payment gateways of today make it possible for customers to make payments using a variety of methods, such as credit cards, debit cards, e-wallets, internet banking, the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), and many more. In addition, the major gateways make it possible for businesses to take payments in a variety of currencies.
These aspects not only improve the customer experience but also make it possible for clients located anywhere in the world to submit payment information.
As a result, the firm gains more clients and sees an increase in revenue overall.
