Online Payment Gateway Checklist: How to choose the Right one for Your Business
E-commerce’s immense growth in recent years comes with no surprise as it’s proven to be a far more effective method for handling businesses than the former brick-and-mortar approach. At the same time, to go in tandem with the evolving e-commerce space, we’ve seen the emergence of payment gateways that help facilitate these online transactions.
Online payment gateways have become sophisticated and integrated enough to allow the automated purchase of goods and services without the merchant authorizing each transaction before a client gets the product. Also, we do expect more innovation from FinTech companies spearheading this development as they are encouraged by government loans and ease of acquiring licenses.
While that’s the case, the current population of online payment gateways leaves merchants facing a tough task when picking the best to use for their business. Although most merchants will usually have more than one payment option, the two or three they eventually choose will have to be top drawer to allow their customers to make seamless payments.
We often see this well practiced by, for example Luxury Casino in Canada, and it’s not a surprise considering the steps they have to go through for licensing. These criteria are not a be-all-end-all because of the changing nature of the tech industry. However, it’s a great way to start, especially if you haven’t used an online payment gateway before.
Online payment checklist
Here are factors businesses should consider before integrating a payment gateway:
- PCI Compliance
The first thing to check out is to confirm if the payment gateway under consideration aligns with PCI’s approval. Regardless of the affiliations with multiple brands you see on their website, you probably got a bad payment gateway in your hands if there’s no indication of PCI licensing.
The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) ensures that all customers’ data are encrypted end-to-end. This ensures that transaction and account details are protected. Aside from regular site SSL certificates, a good payment gateway should always have this checked.
- Fraud Protection
This requirement should be satisfied by any payment gateway you choose if you hope to recover funds for your clients if there’s an authorized transaction on their account. Using a payment gateway with fraud protection protects the merchant against clients attempting fraudulent activities.
Rather than spending much cash to set up an anti-fraud operation for your business, you can convert the money to good use while allowing the gateway to handle many tasks that keep you safe.
- Ease of Use
Picking an online payment gateway that doesn’t require much technical effort to work with is vital for any merchant who wants to troubleshoot payment seamlessly. Keep in mind that one or two lapses in their network will come once in a while, and you wouldn’t need to pay IT support every time you need to know what’s going wrong in your merchant account.
Also, the client-side checkout process needs to be short and easy to understand so customers don’t get frustrated when trying to purchase a product. You should never try to use a payment gateway that may confuse you or your clients.
- Payment Gateway Integration
This is an important criterion for any service provider that wishes to automate certain processes. You want to ensure that the payment gateway allows clients to access your products right after purchase automatically. Then, you want to check if their system also supports recurring payments, especially if you’re offering a time-based service to your clients.
Although not necessary for new business owners, in the future, it might be best to look for gateways that can automate payment to your business account once it reaches a specific threshold.
While writing a marketing copy, it is crucial to attract the audience to what you’re offering. Remember that a bad payment gateway can negatively impact sales, which every growing merchant doesn’t need.
