When you look for a payment gateway that perfectly suits your business, the process quickly becomes time-consuming. There are countless different providers to choose from and it is normal to be confused. A good payment gateway for one eCommerce store is not necessarily the best one for another.
Generally speaking, it is always best to work with a service provider that is as experienced as possible and that offers numerous opportunities, like Baxity. Those that offer just one payment gateway with a single option are not preferred.
When you analyze your options, consider the following tips that can help you make the correct choice.
Choose An Appropriate Payment Flow
Ideally, the business grows. As this happens, the payment gateway needs to be able to effortlessly scale. Customers have to directly pay or are to be redirected. When this happens, no downtime should appear. The best payment gateway for an eCommerce website offers such important options for the customers:
- The site needs a payment form – One that is fully-integrated, which needs to be fully secured.
- Redirect or iFrame for payments – Customers are either redirected to a payment page that is securely hosted or needs to enter information in a website embedded iFrame.
- Escrow system – This is an option for some businesses. The escrow system will withhold funds until an event happens like an authority offers access.
Choose A Correct Product
Whenever talking about online services or selling products on the internet, the payment gateway is needed. Customers need to be allowed to buy a service or a product through a payment form, like an electronic check, debit card, credit card or PayPal. As the right product is chosen, the best thing to do is to analyze the adaptability of the payment solution. At the same time, security needs to be assessed and should never be sacrificed.
Making Customers Feel Secure And Safe
The number of people that use online shopping is constantly growing. This is why you need to adapt sooner rather than later. A big thing to take into account is that online customers need to feel safe and secure. It does not matter if your business is large or small.
As an example, there are some payment gateways that allow you to customize everything in the payment experience in order to reflect the brand logo, color palette, and typeface. Some customers do not know that they are redirected so when this happens, they have to see that the brand is represented. As the gateway is selected, robust security features have to be offered. As an extra mention, be sure that anti-fraud protection is included as this is really important these days.
Always Consider Fees
Pricing for payment gateways and processing is usually based on the transaction type (online, real-world or combination). Also, other factors can be taken into account, like revenue consistency, markets served, transaction frequency and business sales. You have to compare your business model with what is offered by the provider and the fee structure. There are services that require contracts and setup fees. Others have transaction fees that have to be respected. All of these have to be analyzed so you choose something that is appropriate for the eCommerce site.
Easy Checkout On All Devices
Around 15% of all eCommerce sales are nowadays conducted on mobile devices. This number has been constantly growing in the past few years and it is a certainty that this will not stop. You need to evaluate payment gateway options and see if you can offer a really active checkout experience, one that is efficient on practically all devices that might be used. Having a responsive design is just one part of the equation.
Guaranteed Effective Transactions
A quarter of your customers will abandon the purchase in the event that they are forced to register and get an account in order to shop. When the checkout procedure utilizes a shopping cart offered by a third-party and it includes enrolment, you need to be sure that this is just an optional factor. Guest checkouts are mandatory in the modern eCommerce environment.
In a similar fashion, the best payment gateway needs to allow you to remove fields you do not want so that checkout is as easy as possible. Online retailers can easily boost their conversion rates by up to 50% when form redundancies are removed. The best example of such a redundancy is forcing the customer to manually enter both the shipping and the billing information when these addresses are exactly the same. There needs to be an easy-to-click button that states the addresses are the same as opposed to having to enter these two times.
Multiple Available Features
Most payment service providers nowadays offer countless features so they accommodate the needs of most businesses. For instance, when you need to offer services and products to customers from all around the world, the gateway you choose has to accept all the major debit cards, credit cards, and even multiple currencies.
If the eCommerce website does not accept mobile payments, this needs to change as soon as possible. This is especially the case now since people buy and use more and more mobile gadgets every single month.
A Simple Integration Process
When financial procedures are performed, the payment processing function has to be integrated into the website. Usually, the best possible solution is to choose the provider that sends the customer to the third-party site. This is where credit card information is entered. Then, after the purchase is made, the provider sends the customer back to the online shop. However, this is not always the best option and you might need something else. No matter what option is chosen, the integration process has to be as simple as possible.
The Merchant Account
Most eCommerce business owners do not know that this exists. The merchant account is mandatory for the payment process channel to be complete for a website. So, what is the merchant account?
The merchant account appears when the client makes an online payment as a payment gateway is utilized. Money is transferred into the account of a retailer, which is different than the actual bank account of the merchant. Cash inside the merchant account sits there until the bank of the customer approves it. After this approval happens, money is moved to the bank account of the merchant.
For most people, this process seems as being one that is unnecessary. However, this actually reduces transfer fees because the gateways that directly transfer money to the account of the dealer always charge higher processing fees. Based on this, using gateways with a merchant account is better.
Mobile Payments
It is expected that mobile payments will fully replace buying with credit cards. This is the prediction even for the point-of-sale brick and mortar environments. The best payment gateways include mobile payment compatibility. This allows the buyer to easily transfer funds with the use of a mobile phone. This is done through a site that is perfectly mobile-optimized or through a branded app. The feature should be offered by the payment gateway but it has to operate in a similar way to regular desktop payments while offering very strong security measures.
Round The Clock Customer Support
You should be aware of the fact that there are countless payment services without customer support. These need to be avoided because users end up relying on manual instructions whenever problems appear. You have to avoid this situation and double check if the payment gateway provider gives you access to live technical support.
At the bare minimum, the customer support that is offered should be active during the standard working hours. You will surely need to deal with some technical problems sooner or later. Customer support helps you solve them fast. When an urgent problem appears, you should not rely on an email system.
Recurring Billing
This is a feature that is not needed by all eCommerce sites, but is necessary for many businesses. This system allows you to create automatic billing cycles, as when customers will be making payments for monthly subscriptions or services. In this case, it is also important to know all that you can about negative option billing regulations. Non-profit organizations are another type of business that often appreciate recurring billing since this allows them to easily collect money from the contributors that regularly help them.
Conclusions
At the end of the day, when you fully understand your unique business needs, it is so much easier to select and execute an appropriate payment gateway. When you make a correct choice, you have an instant and highly positive impact on the experience your customer has. The same goes for profitability and cash flow.
You need to go through really good research and you have to consider absolutely all the factors that were highlighted above. This will help you to choose a suitable product and then properly implement it.
As an extra final tip, when you do not know what to choose, ask for feedback from your customers. You can offer them some sort of future discount or another promotion. The feedback obtained from the customers can be used to select a very effective and appreciated payment gateway.
