A payment gateway is a service to collect online payments from different apps or websites. There are many parts when you are about to set up an online store. To get your business up and running, the one thing you can’t avoid is the ability of your business to accept digital payments.
Online purchases are processed in different ways. Therefore, you need the best payment gateway to ease the transactions. There are lots of service providers you can find.
Finding the right payment gateway for a website can be challenging. In this article, you get to know more about payment gateway, how it functions, and how you can choose the best service for your e-commerce business.
What is an online payment gateway?
A payment gateway is an important aspect of the entire payment processing system. It is the tunnel that transfers information between your bank and payment portals, such as websites. In short, a payment gateway is a software that allows you to perform an online transaction with the different payment modes.
The modes include debit cards, credit cards, net banking, and other online wallets available these days. The payment gateway acts as a third party, and responsible for transferring money from your bank to the payment portals. The software communicates with the bank to authenticate the payment.
Payments are either accepted or rejected at the gateway. Factors such as insufficient funds or wrong entry of card details could result in the decline of the transaction. Furthermore, the online payment gateway encrypts the user’s card details.
This way, it ensures that your business is following the required standards of protecting consumer data. As such, the checkout process is safe for both parties. A payment gateway is very important for an e-commerce website.
How online gateways work
Online gateways focus more on securing the sensitive data given by the consumer throughout the whole process. The bank details and the data from the card are encrypted. Here are the different steps through which a payment gateway works.
1. A consumer places order on a website or mobile app, and clicks on the ‘Checkout’ button, ‘Submit’, or other equivalent buttons.
2. After this, the e-commerce platform or the website takes the user to a payment gateway. Here, the user needs to enter all the relevant information about the card or bank they are about to pay with. The online gateway takes the user to a 3D secure page or the page of the bank and asks for authorizing the transaction.
3. The payment gateway then gets approved of the transaction. The bank checks whether the user has enough funds in the account to make the transaction successful or not.
4. The online gateway intimates the merchant accordingly. If the bank replies with a ‘No’, the merchant displays an error message to the user and tells them about the issue with the card or bank. When the response is a ‘Yes’ from the user’s bank, the merchant requests for the payment from the bank.
5. The bank settles the transaction with the online gateway, and the money is paid to the merchant. After the process is over, the user gets a message confirming that the order has been placed.
What are the best payment gateways?
To achieve success in your online endeavor, you have to sell products. Trust is the only thing you need to have from your visitors. An online gateway assures your visitors about your trustworthiness.
If the payment methods in your e-commerce website aren’t set up in the right manner, you can suffer a significant amount of loss in orders placed. This way, you would experience a drop in sales. Incorporating the best payment gateway ensures the long-term success of your business.
There are lots of online gateway providers on the market. The best provider you choose depends on your specific needs. Here is a list of some of the best payment gateways that can serve your needs better.
1. PayPal
Founded in 1998, PayPal is one of the widely-used online payment gateways that accept both debit and credit card payments. Also, buyers can use it for free. However, store owners need to pay an amount as transition fees.
PayPal has over 220 million accounts across the world and all of them are active. It allows you to receive and make payments from any part of the world. PayPal allows you to process service for auction sites, e-commerce sites, and other entities.
PayPal accepts credit cards including Visa and Amex. Also, it provides for an easy cart integration, online invoicing, lots of customization options, and enables credit card payments. PayPal is associated with the famous marketplace eBay for a long time.
However, the payment gateway would no longer be the main part of eBay’s payment option by 2020. Pricing is competitive with PayPal as it charges 2.9% per transaction without any kind of monthly fees. It is perfect for low volume merchants.
2. myPOS
The payment request is an online feature that enables you to accept payments remotely from your consumers. myPOS payment gateway allows you to securely accept any kind of card payment in mobile apps or websites.
Easy to integrate, this online gateway helps you trace your online transactions. Also, you can run real-time assessment reports. Now you can accept payments at your online store with the ready-to-install plugins. Find a suitable plugin that suits your business, and install it.
myPOS payment gateway plugins support WooCommerce, OpenCart, Magento, PrestaShop, CloudCart, and so on. myPOS online gateways are like an online version of your credit card machine. The payment gateway of myPOS consists of many useful services that make payment a breeze.
This way, you can increase the productivity of your online stores and generate revenue. The company is developing intuitive payment tools. They help your business grow and solve payment issues in new ways.
3. Stripe
It is another powerful payment gateway designed for online business. The company claims to tackle transactions worth millions of dollars. Stripe provides you with a variety of flexible tools to help you customize your payment processes.
Stripe provides lots of APIs that help you create your own on-demand marketplaces, subscription services, or crowdfunding platforms. Also, the platform supports many development languages that include Java, PHP, Python, and Ruby.
This payment platform is specially designed for larger e-commerce firms. Furthermore, the platform supports several currencies and provides features such as one-click checkout, smartphone payments, and subscription billing.
Users can have access to a dashboard where they have the liberty to visualize transactions. Although Stripe is a feature-rich online payment gateway, it demands a lot of technological knowledge from the users.
Stripe provides an additional benefit to the European merchants with a processing fee of 1.4% and 20p per transaction.
How to use a payment gateway in your website:
To make use of the payment gateway for website you have to integrate the platform into your website or e-commerce site. When you integrate a payment solution in your online business site, it delivers a seamless consumer experience.
To do so, choose a payment gateway that can integrate seamlessly and easily with your e-commerce platform. For any kind of technical specifications, you can enquire about the service providers. You need to evaluate API access and developer tools to ensure compatibility with the website.
After the details are verified, you can integrate the online gateway to your online store and receive payments. The whole process depends on the service providers and website host. After the integration process is completed, you can start accepting payments through the online gateway.
The payments would be transferred to your bank account almost immediately. You won’t have to wait for a long time for money transfers, even from overseas bank accounts. If you choose the right service provider, get all the verifications done, and have an optimized website, installing the payment gateway and using it will be a simple and faster process.
How to choose the right online payment gateways for e-commerce
When it comes to choosing the right payment gateways for your e-commerce site, the choice lies between hosted and integrated payment gateways. Hosted online gateways take away the transaction from your website on the processor’s platform.
Integrated options allow you to establish a connection with your users through the API provided with your website. Both of these types have their merits and demerits. Here are some gateway integrations and plugins for your website.
1. WooCommerce payment gateway
WooCommerce is one of the popular e-commerce platforms in the world. It is a plugin that turns your website into a powerful online store. This powerful plugin is an open-source solution. Also, the plugin is free for commercial and personal use.
If your e-commerce website is built with WordPress, this plugin enables you to take online payments with ease. With lots of extensions available, your online store would be more productive than ever. It has rich features for any kind of online store.
However, you may have to incur additional costs if you want to add certain features. Although the core system doesn’t cost you a dime, the add-ons could be pricey. Now you can take payments with your selected payment gateway service provider.
WooCommerce allows you to choose from over a hundred online gateways including PayPal, Stripe, Amazon Pay, and so on.
2. Magento payment gateway
Magento is another popular e-commerce platform in terms of self-hosted solutions. The platform is used by retailers like Nespresso and Samsung, as well as numerous small e-commerce websites. The platform has lots of features intended for e-commerce solutions.
Part of operating a Magento online store includes using the right payment gateway. Choosing the best payment gateway for Magento websites is huge for existing and new Magento online stores. Security, capabilities, convenience, and pricing is what it takes to evaluate an online payment gateway.
While choosing a payment gateway, you don’t have to pick only a single one. It is better for merchants to have several online gateways to provide options to consumers. Keep in mind that some payment processing firms have a monthly processing rate that you must meet. You can integrate PayPal, Strip, and many other payment gateways to Magento.
3. OpenCart payment gateway
OpenCart is an open-source e-commerce website platform without any kind of monthly fees. The dashboard gives you an insight into some of the important metrics such as customers, sales, and so on. The platform has multi-store support that allows you to control from a single interface.
The different functions in this platform include setting products for other online stores, localize your websites, and use specific themes. Product options are pretty much flexible with OpenCart. In addition, the solution allows you to add other product variables.
Like most of the e-commerce platforms available on the marketplace, OpenCart can be customized and extended. It has hundreds of themes and modules for you to use and make your website a unique one.
Integrating payment gateways in OpenCart is done with the least trouble. You can get plenty of e-commerce online gateways that are compatible with OpenCart. Choose the one you like and integrate.
4. PrestaShop payment gateway
Another open-source platform intended for e-commerce websites, PrestaShop is quite popular. It provides the user with the option to compare several payment gateways and use the one suited best.
Again, there are plenty of payment gateways and modules for merchants using PrestaShop on their online stores. But, it can be hard to find out which one is perfect for the business. PrestaShop provides ready integration with many online gateways.
You can choose from the bundled integrations that come with PrestaShop and install them for free. These include PayPal, Ogone, Stripe, and Skrill.
In conclusion
All the aforementioned information regarding payment gateways for e-commerce websites may be overwhelming. Remember that a trusted online gateway has the ability to increase conversion rates and improve your sales. Hence, before signing up for a service provider, business owners should conduct thorough research.
We believe that the right payment partner is an important aspect of your online retail store. Our experts are specialized in providing reviews for the best and most affordable online payment solutions. Talk to myPOS professionals about choosing the right payment gateway for your website.
A payment gateway is a software that allows you to perform an online transaction with the different payment modes.
There are lots of payment gateway providers on the market. However, the best payment gateway is the one which serves your specific business needs completely. Some of the best payment gateways on the market are PayPal, myPOS and Stripe.
Here are the different steps through which a payment gateway works:
1. A consumer places order on a website or mobile app and the e-commerce platform takes the user to a payment gateway to complete the payment.
2. Then, the user enters all the relevant information about the card or bank they are about to pay with and the online payment gateway takes the user to a 3D secure page or the page of the bank and asks for authorizing the transaction.
3. The payment gateway then gets approved of the transaction. The bank checks whether the user has enough funds in the account to make the transaction successful or not.
4. If the bank replies with a ‘No’, the merchant displays an error message to the user and tells them about the issue with the card or bank. When the response is a ‘Yes’ from the user’s bank, the merchant requests payment from the bank.
5. The bank settles the transaction with the online payment gateway, and the money is paid to the merchant. After the process is over, the user gets a confirmation message that the payment has been completed successfully.
PayPal is one of the world’s most popular and most widely-used online payment gateways that accept both debit and credit card payments.