Discover the ultimate guide to “Choosing the Best Payment Gateway for Your Business.” Explore key factors, features, and considerations to optimize your online transactions and drive growth. Unlock the power of seamless and secure payment processing today. If you’re growing your business and want to simplify your customer’s payment procedure and boost your cash flow, then you should be certain that online payments made through payment gateways are the best option. Payment gateways do not just enable your customers to pay you, but they also reflect the payment instantly to you and increase your cash flow.
In order to begin receiving online payments it is necessary to have an established, secure system that allows you to manage sensitive customer data. In essence, that’s what a payment gateway can do, that is, it allows online payments and debits the credit cards of your customers safely.
Payment Gateways Achieve This By Performing Three Actions:
- Validating credit card information securely.
- Make sure that enough funds are in place to finish transactions.
- Approving transactions and then transferring the funds in your checking account.
All this information is handled by secure payment gateway servers to ensure that you are free of any responsibility for keeping sensitive customer information.
How Do You Begin Receiving Money?
For you to begin taking credit card transactions You need three items: a merchant account, an account with a bank for business, and the payment processor.
The merchant account serves as a temporary holding account that accepts payments made by the processor and transfers the money to your bank account. The merchant account holds the funds to reduce the chance of unrecorded payments. Establishing these accounts are an essential phase of the payment receipt procedure.
There are two kinds of merchant accounts, which store money in a different way:
Dedicated account: The type of account you choose to use is created specifically for you, and is comparable with your current bank accounts. There’s plenty of underwriting and the company that manages it usually conducts an assessment of risk before opening an account. In general, you’ll have greater control over an account that is dedicated to you which allows you to determine rates, create time limits for holding and much much more. It’s ideal for brick-and-mortar shops that are looking to receive online payment.
Account With Aggregate: With this kind of account, the cash is kept in a shared account along with other companies with their money. It is easier to establish however, you’re not in complete control and are not able to set transaction rates. It’s ideal for e-commerce companies.
There are a couple of “modern” gateways that don’t require you to open an account with a merchant. They come with an integrated account with a merchant, so that you don’t need to set up a separate one. The only drawback is that they cost slightly more expensive prices. These include: PayPal, Stripe, Brain Tree and many more.
Factors to Consider While Choosing A Payment Gateway:
Selecting the best payment processor for your company is a crucial decision. If you select a service that doesn’t match your business’s needs, you’ll end up losing customers and money as well.
These are some of the crucial aspects:
Cost
The first factor to think about when choosing a payment processor is the total cost you’ll pay. The cost of using the payment gateway is divided into three categories: set-up fees, the monthly fee and transaction fees.
To determine the most economical option for your company, both the quantity and the value of your transactions have been taken into consideration. The majority of payment processors offer an affordable transaction fee of 2.9 percent plus 30 cents. This could be a great option for companies when the amount of transactions they make is usually not too significant. However in the event that you do, transaction charges can significantly increase your costs. If your business is primarily involved in transactions with high value, be sure to choose payment gateways that provide the services they offer for a fixed monthly cost and a minimal transaction cost.
Cards of All Kinds are Allowed
The most frequently used credit cards include Visa, MasterCard, and Amex. Each of these types of card are accepted by the majority of payment processors. If your customers prefer to pay with other types of credit cards such as a debit card or Diners Club card, you should ensure that your payment gateways can accept this card.
Time to Hold
While payments are generally accepted almost immediately however, the funds are kept for a few days before it is transferred into your account. This is in order to facilitate the processing of refunds and charge-backs. These hold periods vary between 1-7 days based upon your company providing the payment services. You may choose to hold or be paid instantly according to your cash flow.
Multi Currencies Support
If you conduct business internationally, it is important to ensure that your payment processor can accept payments in various currencies and across different countries. It is crucial to allow your customers to pay in their local currency. Also, be aware of the fees associated with foreign transactions in currencies.
A Recurring Bill
If you operate a business that is subscription-based then you must select an online payment service that is able to handle the various moving pieces that make up regular billing. Any service you select has to be capable of saving and storing customer information to be used for future transactions, and automatically charge credit cards according to pre-set subscription schedules and also offer retry alternatives in case of unsuccessful transactions. In the event that you don’t, you’ll need to complete all of this job manually..
Hosted Vs. Non-Hosted
A payment gateway could host offsite (the client is directed to the website of the payment processor to input their information) or it can be hosted on your website (the user will be capable of entering their details without leaving your site).
Each of these types for hosting gateways have each of them its advantages and disadvantages. One benefit of hosting platforms is they decrease the possibility of storing sensitive data on your own website. Although this is an important benefit, the drawback is that redirecting your customers ‘ transactions to another website adds an additional step into the payment process which makes it more time-consuming than it normally is. If your customers are forced to have to go through this lengthy procedure and the transaction does not go through due to a glitch, or an error of some sort, they might get frustrated and stop trying the process again. Because of this, businesses that have high transactions prefer having non-hosted payment gateways that are integrated into their online stores.
Security
When it comes time to receive payments online, since you’re storing sensitive financial data and data, the protection of your processor should be of top priority. Remember that different payment processors adhere to distinct security requirements. Be sure the payment gateway you select is Level-1 PCI DSS conforming. Certain gateways have fraud detection as well as other screening tools to safeguard your company from fraud.
Mobile Payment Support
The majority of consumers purchase from tablets and phones now therefore it is important to choose a payment gateway that accepts payments by mobile devices too. This gives your customers the ability to pay you no matter what device they are using.
Limits
There are payment processors that have an upper limit for the transaction amount you can handle each month. This may not be an issue for small-scale businesses. But, if you’re an enterprise that handles products of high value or numerous transactions, you must be aware of these limitations, or you could be unable to attract new customers.
Incorporation Into Other Systems
Also, you should consider whether your payment gateway is able to integrate with your invoicing or accounting software, so that, when an online payment is made, the invoice will be updated automatically within your accounting system. This can reduce your time and energy since you don’t need to keep track of the payments and then manually update payment data within your accounting software as it is received.
Note:
Utilising the best payment processor ensures that customer payments are easy and effortless. Finding a payment processor that ticks all the boxes requires a bit more effort. You’ll have to ensure that it meets your needs as a business and is compatible with your location, enables the ability to receive payments from all over the world (for the benefit of your customers from all over the world) and hopefully at a reasonable cost. Furthermore many businesses prefer connecting their gateways for payments with an accounting system, so that their books are kept up-to-date. We’ve done this by making sure we have our Online Accounting Software that has payment gateways that are popular which cover all of these aspects and gives you many options in order to facilitate accepting payments.