Every business owner who wants to establish and manage their on-line store needs to select an appropriate payment gateway for their store. Payment gateway handles all the currency transactions that occur on the eCommerce site in a secured way which facilitates achieving the trust of consumers. Approximately 41% of online buyer use credit/charge cards for making payments, 22% make use of debit cards, 3% utilize cash-on-delivery option and 21% employ PayPal for making the e-Shopping expense (Statista, 2014). With the overwhelmed number of solutions available online, many find it difficult to determine the most significant features to look out while selecting a payment gateway solution.
Selecting the precise payment gateway solution for your business can often decide whether the online store is affluent or not. If online payment configuration is not optimal for your business, either the business would lose several potential customers or end up spending huge transaction bills. It is advisable to monitor the payment bottom-line of your eStore to ensure long-term business success and profitability.
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Few question that you need to consider before opting a payment gateway
- What will be the Service Cost?
- What features do they offer, such as fraud protection and virtual terminals?
- Is it mandatory to have a merchant account for your chosen gateway?
- Does the payment gateway support your online store’s country?
Finding the payment gateway which accurately suits your business will be a time consuming process with the huge list of choices. Here are few factors which needs to be considered while choosing a payment gateway,
- Security: While selecting a payment gateway partner, Security of card payment data is a foremost important aspect. Gateway service provider must be level 1 compliant with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). This ensures they have attained the utmost level of card data security.
- Sign-Up Charge: In-case you are in startup level of eCommerce shop or with a fixed budget, it is always advisable to prefer a service provider with zero sign-up fees. Though, if you desire to have any specific features or planning to sell large scale of merchandise, then gateways with a sign-up fee can be more effective in the long run.
- Flexible Fees Structure: Understanding the fee structure of the service provider is essential before signing up a contract, as the hidden fees degrades your profit level. It is advisable to lower these charges as much as it enhances the business bottom-line. Some of the gateways charge a fee per transaction and others have a monthly subscription fee for a fixed number of transactions.
- Countries and Multi-Currencies Supported: If you are trading a product online which has global demand, payment gateway with Multi-currency options is an essential factor for supporting international shoppers. Thus it enables the business owners to charge their clients in their native currencies.
- Product Matters: You need to make sure with the terms and conditions of the payment gateway with respect to the products you sell, as some of them do not provide service for selling intangibles such as digital products and services.
- Customer Support: Online stores are available 24/7 to engage shoppers, hence its important to ensure that the service provider have an appropriate level of customer support for your requirement, both via telephone as well as mail for your required time zone.
Although merely covering the surface of such a wide subject, this has hopefully placed some emphasis on those areas that require the utmost amount of consideration when choosing the precise payment gateway for your online store.
DCKAP is an end to end E-Commerce solutions provider specializing in building Enterprise E-Commerce store fronts in Magento. You can reach us at info@dckap.com (or) 1-877-872-3252 (US) (or) +44(0) 144 250 6383(UK)
