Consumers are seen trending towards the eCommerce realm. As a result, more and more businesses are found acknowledging as well as adopting numerous tried and tested eCommerce trends such as voice shopping, social media commerce, AR/VR Shopping, Location-based marketing, Livestream shopping, more and more payment gateways, and so forth. Well, I am sure you might not have all day long here so I won’t be getting into details and descriptions of each one mentioned above. However, I would like to cover how to choose the right eCommerce payment gateway.
Introduction
Over a couple of years, especially after the COVID pandemic, there has been a significant rise in the eCommerce development realm, and to be honest, it won’t be slowing down anytime soon. One of the most crucial aspects of developing an ideal eCommerce website is offering the best possible options in regard to the payment gateways to your end users. According to several types of research, more than 80% of customers are found buying products using their credit or debit cards or other relevant options such as Paypal, GooglePay, Apple Pay, and so on!
Now, what exactly is a payment gateway? Well, it is nothing much but a basic mediator that interfaces well between your shopping cart and the credit card/debit card company. These gateways simply ensure that the payment is done right then and there. Think of this one as an interfacing gateway where seamless transactions can be done between the merchant and the customer.
Why is there a need for a Payment Gateway?
As mentioned earlier, Payment gateways are basically a kind of online service well-integrated with different eCommerce platforms. As the name implies, they are incorporated for giving or accepting payments from different sources. These types of gateways are more like third-party systems facilitating merchants via online transactions.
So what exactly happens here is when a customer places an order, he or she is proceeded toward the eCommerce site and is asked to confirm the order details and make the relevant payment. After this, the customer is supposed to enter the relevant card details and all this is done via SSL (Secure Socket Layer) encryption. This means there is no scope for cheating or fraud. After this, the payment request is forwarded to the eCommerce gateway and then passed to the processor of the respective retailer. Further, the request is transferred to the bank for its approval and then the payment is passed. All this happens within a few seconds. No kidding!
Wondering how these payment gateways are beneficial? Well, not just one or two, I would like to mention several crucial benefits of incorporating eCommerce payment gateways.
- Easy checkout – Having a swift and seamless checkout process is something that everyone simply goes crazy about. Moreover, this feature of any payment gateway makes the checkout process easier and worth considering.
- Reduction in Abandoned Carts – Another benefit of using relevant payment gateways is that there has been observed a severe reduction in customers canceling the purchase. You see, in case the checkout process is tricky, customers wouldn’t wait for a second and switch easily to your competitors. Also, not to mention that easy payment options can definitely assist businesses in increasing their revenue.
- Others – Apart from these two, payment gateways can well integrate with any kind of shopping cart, lead to faster processing, and cost-effectiveness, and are often compliant with security standards like PCI DSS, etc.
How to choose the Best eCommerce Payment Gateway?
Now here comes the big question, how to choose the best eCommerce payment gateway. Making any random selection won’t help much. I mean even if you end up choosing the top five Google searches on the best eCommerce payment gateways, I am sure you might not choose the right one to collaborate with. Here it is very important to understand the significance of selecting the payment gateway carefully.
#1 Security
With security breaches happening every now and then, one of the most crucial aspects or factors to take into consideration is high-end security, especially when looking through several payment gateways. With so many security breaches happening every now and then, it is very crucial to consider the aspect when choosing an eCommerce payment gateway. After all, this is the space where you will be asking your customers about their sensitive information such as credit card or debit card information, CVV, etc.
What if this information gets leaked? Not just your customers’ money but simultaneously your reputation will be gone. As a business owner, it’s your responsibility to keep all this information safe and secure. In fact, the best eCommerce gateways are supposed to be PCI-DSS compliant. In addition, they can assist well in regard to fraud detection, and screening technology to make sure everything is safe and secured. So before deciding on one in particular, just ensure that you have double-checked a payment gateway’s PCI DSS compliance status.
#2 Seamless Onboarding
Another crucial aspect to look into is seamless onboarding. Now let’s say your website is ready to go live. Have you wondered for how long you want it to start accepting online payments? It has to be short and simple and of course in the minimal amount of time possible. There were times when the merchant onboarding procedures turned out to be quite long and cumbersome.
Fortunately, that’s not the case anymore! There are the best payment gateways available that enable you to become a merchant within a day or two, irrespective of the complexities of your business. So make sure to end up choosing a payment gateway that comprises a short onboarding procedure.
#3 High-end Customer Support
Another crucial aspect to look into when choosing a payment gateway is whether it offers high-end customer support. Well, you must because here we are trying to offer round-the-clock services to your valued customers. What if the customer is willing to buy at midnight and unable to make relevant payments due to some kind of issue? So in that case, they must receive active and quick support from the relevant payment gateway provider.
And not just that, several payment-related queries might rise irrespective of time, during such situations one has to be well-prepared. After all, this is the only way through which you can deliver overall satisfaction to your end customers.
And we are almost done!
Of course, these are not the only factors, there are several others such as making the right choice between hosted and non-hosted platforms, checking the price, double checking on the transactional limitations, does it offer multiple currency support, and so forth. However, all the aforementioned pointers are the top most factors to take into account before choosing any eCommerce payment gateway. I hope you did find the following post needful. If so, feel free to share among your peers and help us in spreading the word.
