How The Choice Of A Payment Gateway Service May Decide Your Success in Ecommerce

As a business owner and particularly an e-commerce vendor, you must know how money gets transferred from your customer to you. Payment processing involves two phases and these phases include the authorization phase in which the sale is approved and the settlement phase where in the money gets transferred to your account.




How A Transaction Takes Place

Let's go through the entire procedure of how a transaction takes place:

1. A shopper visits your site and purchases an item on it using a plastic card.
2. The information is transferred through the payment gateway, where it is encrypted and transferred again to the payment processor maintaining extreme privacy.
3. Your payment processor sends this information to the issuing bank along with an instruction to release the payment in order to complete the transaction.
4. The issuing bank can either approve or reject the request.
5. In case it's approved, your payment processor confirms the transaction and instructs your merchant bank to transfer the money to your account.

This sounds like too much work -- a flow diagram of too many activities, but in fact the entire procedure takes not more than one or two seconds.

The settlement part is the last and final part of the entire payment transfer process and you get paid at this stage.

The issuing bank will release the money, which gets transferred to your merchant bank first and in turn credits this money into your account.

What is Important?

Now you have the funds available in your account. Your merchant bank reserves the right to keep a part of the money transferred, which you cannot use. This is done to safeguard the interest of the customers in case they are not satisfied with the product and decide to return it.

Choose The Right Payment Gateway

In that case, the entire money has to be returned to the customer by your E-Commerce company. The entire settlement process might take a few days. This way, your selection of a payment gateway service is extremely important because it decides how a transaction is conducted on your website. It also affects the entire sales procedure, wherein you offer additional transparency and a better experience to your customer.

It also involves the role of technology in the entire process. If technology used is not able to support these operations in a timely manner, it would reflect badly on the entire customer experience. Your brand loyalty may go down and your revenues might get hit in a big way. No wonder, most of the business coaches and consultants say that customer experience is a crucial part of the success of your eCommerce venture.

Your failure to provide good customer experience may ultimately backfire on you and sabotage all your efforts to increase your revenues and grow your brand.

Finding The Right E-commerce Payment Gateway For You

As an e-commerce merchant, it is important to choose the right e-commerce payment gateway to ensure the success of your e-commerce website. Customer satisfaction should be the top most priority of a business owner.

If you do not secure the payment options, then there are high chances of losing customer’s trust. So, to ensure that your customers are happy, it is important to invest in the right e-commerce payment gateway. A right payment gateway is the one which can benefit both the buyer as well as the seller.

Secure: A payment gateway should meet all the compliance requirements and secure and protect customer’s sensitive data so that the merchant and the customer is safe from any fraudulent activities.

Quick :  Buyers prefer ecommerce websites where they can make the purchase with a credit card. A payment gateway ensures that the online transactions are fast and easy and make the payment process hassle-free for the customer.

Convenient : Customers who have an option of paying through credit card are more convenient as they can transact and shop at any point of time without visiting any physical store. 

Some of the factors worth considering while choosing an ecommerce payment gateway are:

1. Multi-currency support : It is recommended to check if the gateway provider supports multi-currency payments in case you want to reach out to shoppers globally. 

2. Sign-up process : Avoid PayTabs payment gateways which require the users to go through a sign-up process and fill up unnecessary fields and also it is advisable to go with a service provider with zero sign-up fees. Have a close look at the terms and conditions of the payment gateway provider. 

3. Payment Methods : Check out if they offer multiple payment methods such as credit cards, debit cards etc.

4. Fees Structure : Before signing up the contract, understand the fees structure as well as check if there are any hidden fees. Choose a cost efficient payment gateway provider that will help guard your profit margin and provide a good shopping experience for your customers. Pay close attention to the transaction fees of the payment gateway service provider and ensure that it is within your budget.

5. Customer Support : Ensure that the service provider offers 24/7 customer support to meet the requirements of the consumers both via telephone as well as email.

A right payment gateway provides a secure link between the ecommerce website and the bank. For an ecommerce business owner, these are some of the important factors to choose the right payment gateway for your ecommerce website. Go for a payment gateway that can handle all your customers’ transactions in a secure way and help achieve the trust of your buyers.