Payment Gateways: 8 Questions To Ask Before Choosing One

Payment gateways are an important part of any e-commerce setup. They exist to facilitate financial transactions between online stores and the customers who purchase things from them. If you run an online store, you’ll know that you have to install them on your website in order to process and accept payments from customers.

Does It Provide A Decent Customer Experience?

A good payment gateway will make transactions easy for customers. It will also have a support team that can attend to issues you or your customers may have with it. Go for one that processes payments on-site, instead of transferring the transaction to another web page. This will improve your customers’ user experience.

How Quickly Can You Receive Payments?

If you are keen on collecting payments quickly, you should look for a processor that guarantees this. It’s up to you to decide what’s quick enough– whether it’s within 24 hours or a few days. You’ll also want to ensure that your payment gateway reconciles payments as soon as possible, so you don’t have accounting and cash flow challenges.

Does It Provide Round The Clock Support?

You’ll need to be able to reach your service provider if you have issues with transactions. Such problems can arise at any time of the day. If you can’t get them to fix the issue soon enough, you may lose sales. Support should be available to your customers as well, so that they can get back to making purchases from you.

Service providers typically demand a number of charges from their clients: setup fees, transaction fees, and periodic (e.g. monthly) fees. Try to ascertain that they aren’t charging you more money than they have disclosed to you. This will help you plan and remain in line with your budget.

Is The Gateway Secure?

Your payment processor takes on sensitive financial data from your customers. So it should guarantee protection from security breaches. A data leak that exposes your customer’s financial information to the public could damage your business’s reputation. Take preemptive steps against such an occurrence by using a payment gateway that adheres to high security standards. They should also update their security measures regularly to guard against new threats.

Can You Easily Integrate It With Your Website?

You should be able to integrate your payment gateway with your online store without hitches. It should also not cause problems for your website’s User Experience. Your service provider may assure you that their gateway is easy to integrate with platforms similar to yours. Don’t take theur assurances at face value. Try to confirm that their claims are valid by talking to people who have used (or currently use) their package.

Your customers may want to pay you via different channels. Some will opt for card payments; others will prefer bank transfers. You’ll want your payment gateway to accommodate these options (and more). The more payment channels it caters to, the higher the number of transactions your platform will process. This will keep your conversion rates high, and increase your revenues.

Does It Allow Multi-Currency Transactions?

If you’re doing business with clients from several countries, you’ll need a payment gateway that processes transactions in multiple currencies. Thankfully, a number of Nigerian payment service providers have this feature. You can compare rates and fees across them and choose one that works best for you.

Final Words

Payment gateways are playing an important role in the e-commerce revolution. They are enabling merchants to do business with customers across the globe. However, they don’t all deliver the same quality of service. You should carefully weigh the options available and only settle for one that truly meets your needs.