At least 63% of shopping occasions begin online, according to a study done by Think With Google in 2018. Now that more people are staying home, online shopping is expected to grow exponentially in the coming months.
If you’re a business, this is a great time to have an online shop because it allows you to continue gaining revenues even if you can’t open your physical store just yet. In fact, a lot of businesses are now switching online because it’s convenient, fast and very lucrative to buyers.
But before you can fully function online, you have to get a payment gateway, which will allow you to process payments seamlessly and safely. Here are four of the best payment gateway types to choose for your online business:
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1. Self-hosted Payment Gateways
As the name suggests, this type of payment gateway means that you’re in charge of everything. No third party vendors will be involved in this type of service, so you will take care of collecting customer and payment details that will be forwarded to the payment gateway URL.
A self-hosted payment gateway is actually a great option because your customers will only need to deal with your website and not go to any other site, which could sometimes lead to cart abandonment.
The challenge, however, is that you will need to take full responsibility of the security of the transaction by hiring your own technical support team, which could be quite expensive.
2. Hosted payment gateways
In a hosted payment gateway, a third-party provider will be involved in completing payment transactions. Unlike a self-hosted service where the transaction stays within your website, your customer will be redirected to a Payment Services Provider (PSP) page upon checking out for payment.
Upon providing the payment details, the payment is then verified securely within the host’s page and after the payment is completed, the customer will be redirected back to your website.
3. Direct payment gateways
A direct payment gateway is pretty similar to a hosted service, but it is integrated directly with a local bank. Once the customer is ready for checkout, he will be redirected to the bank’s website to fulfill his payment details for approval.
After the details are confirmed and authorized, the payment is then processed and the customer is redirected back to your website.
4. Custom payment gateways
In the instance that you cannot find the right payment gateway provider that meets all your requirements, you may want to go for a custom payment gateway that allows you to design the system according to your specific needs.
Although this could require quite an investment, having your own payment gateway means that you don’t need to depend on third-party providers for payments. Plus, you can make your security features as tight as possible to protect your customers and your business.
Conclusion
With online shopping becoming the go-to form of making purchases by most customers these days, it’s very important to invest in a good payment gateway that will meet all your requirements while sticking with your budget.
High risk merchant accounts are necessary for all business that do no perfectly fit into the what is considered acceptable for some payment gateway processing, while most businesses tend to find that almost all forms of payment processing is easy to setup. Whichever you choose, be sure to develop a solid relationship with your payment processor.
Also Read: Top Free Tools For Marketing Agencies and Website Owners
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