5-Step Guide to Choosing the Best Payment Gateway

E-commerce is growing at an unprecedented rate, thanks to its smart integration with advanced solutions; policy evolution; extensive customization; and the adaptation of new technology. Recent trends indicate that global eCommerce sales will hit $4.2 billion and compensate for 16% of total retail sales. 

As e-commerce continues to grow, the competition is at an all-time high—and the consequences of making the wrong choices can be nothing short of catastrophic for any nascent business. This is why your business needs to choose the best payment gateway for your platforms and ensure that it will provide a personalized experience for your target audience. 

A Marketing Dive report revealed that e-commerce businesses lost $756 billion in 2019 because of the lack of personalization. Outlined in this guide are five steps you should take when finding a reliable online payment gateway that provides your customers with speed, security, and personalization options. 

1. Find the Right Integration Method

The first step when choosing the best online payment gateway is to find the most appropriate integration method that suits your business. As your business continues to grow, the payment gateway selected must be able to scale effortlessly to meet the needs of your clients continuously.

Generally, there are three main methods to integrate a payment gateway—particularly through hosted gateways, direct post method, and non-hosted. Opting for a hosted payment gateway provides your business with easy integration, but it comes with a lack of control that may lower conversion rates. 

On the other hand, the direct post method provides you with a myriad of branding capabilities and customization options without the need for Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) compliance. Unfortunately, it is not entirely secure and may put essential customer data in danger of hackers and cybercriminals. 

Non-hosted or integrated payment gateway providers work well with a business who wants to tailor their payment system to their needs. On the flip side, maintaining the infrastructure of the payment gateway may prove costly in the long run. While all three payment integration methods have their pros and cons, your business needs to assess its needs, budgets, and long-term goals to make an educated decision in choosing the best payment gateway providers.

2. Consider the Payment Gateway Features You Need

Another important factor when choosing an online payment gateway is to ensure that it will sync with your current payment systems. This helps you avoid interrupting your existing customer workflow and provides a secure payment process. 

Look for payment gateway features that enable your business to provide EMV credit card processing, mobile access, simple integration, and omnichannel offerings. By opting for these features, your business can have the necessary tools to accept payments throughout multiple channels while using different methods with ease. 

Beyond providing a reliable customer experience, your business must choose a payment gateway that will make it easier for your employees to work with as well. Especially with the current crisis, your business must opt for payment gateways that provide you and your employees with the ability to accept and keep track of customer payments from anywhere. 

By choosing employee-friendly payment gateways, you will be able to enhance efficiency and help your team members learn how to be a successful remote employee. Moreover, spending less time training your employees on how to use payment gateways will also give you opportunities to focus on scaling and enhancing your products and services. 

3. Study the Pricing

Payment processing solutions can be complicated, as they consist of multiple organizations or financial institutions. Similar to any service, a payment gateway requires you to pay a transaction fee for using a third-party tool to authorize and process payments. 

In most cases, transaction fees are commonly calculated based on the type of digital product and location. Each payment gateway provider has its terms of use and costs. Still, you will usually pay for merchant account setup, monthly gateway fee, and a gateway setup fee on top of a fee for every transaction processed. 

Outside of the individual fees, there are multiple ways that processors can structure payments as part of an overall pricing plan as well. This includes flat-rate pricing wherein your business will pay a fixed percentage for all transaction volume regardless of the actual costs of payments sent by your clients. 

Besides for flat-rate pricing, some of the best payment gateway providers also offer interchange-plus pricing wherein the merchant service provider charges your business a fixed fee in addition to the interchange. At present, there are currently more than 300 different interchange fees, which means that the merchant service charge may vary. 

Tiered pricing is another basic fee plan in which processors take the interchange rates and lump them into three pricing tiers. This can be relatively expensive, especially for small businesses, since the processor defines the pricing tiers however it wants. By studying each pricing point, you will be able to understand whether it’s worth your time and ensure that it delivers a bang for your buck. 

4. Ensure That the Provider Permits Your Products

In general, payment gateway providers classify products into two types, specifically, digital and physical goods. While some popular payment gateways provide their services for physical and digital products, it is not rare for only a single type of product to be available in use for a particular system. 

This is why it is critical for your business to make sure it permits your type of product before subscribing to a provider. By doing so, you will be able to provide an active checkout experience that is receptive to multiple changes and different mobile devices, thus ensuring a smooth checkout process. 

What is more, this also empowers you to build an excellent foundation to establish sustainable long-term growth and achieve your revenue goals. By delivering products that work with your payment gateway provider, you will also be able to verify the identities of involved parties to prevent fake transactions, malicious representations, and other kinds of financial sabotage. 

Furthermore, it ensures that you avoid transmission mistakes in the transaction process and will be completely protected from outside tampering with the distributed information. On top of everything else, it makes your customers feel safe and secure as well, knowing that you can customize the entire purchasing process to fit their preferences. 

5. Make Sure it Provides 24/7 Customer Support

There is a wide range of payment services that do not have any customer support. Users of these payment gateways would need to follow and read manual instructions which are typically found on the provider’s website to fix a problem.

While this can be helpful, it often requires you to gain technical knowledge to fully grasp the information. This is why it is critical to check whether the provider offers live technical support round-the-clock so that you can quickly resolve technical issues and prevent business downtime.

By opting for online payment gateway providers that offer 24/7 support, your business will be able to improve the customer experience and usher in a few benefits, including increased brand loyalty. This also enables you to take full advantage of significant opportunities for proactive customer engagement and retention.

Other than that, it also allows you to be highly receptive to the needs of your customers and get assistance whenever they need it. Best of all, getting 24/7 support from payment gateway providers enables you to enhance your company reputation and increase your customer base to improve sales.

Deciding On a Payment Gateway

When deciding on a payment gateway provider, you need to make sure that it will easily integrate with your website or platform and can help your business grow. Take time to do the research and read reviews before committing to a payment gateway service provider. 

Cardknox is a business-friendly payment gateway provider that enables businesses to integrate secure payments through mobile, online, in-store, and e-commerce. It also offers unique settings and features that include, but are not only limited to, a proprietary card updater, customized payment scheduling, and intelligent transaction routing.