Choosing a Payment Gateway For Your Ecommerce Platform

Earning money is the lifeline and primary aim of any business. Businesses pay a large amount of money on generating more money through advertisements and marketing. The crux of a good Ecommerce platform is the reliability and speed of its payment gateway system. While it may sound very simple, a great amount of research goes into choosing the right one for your business. This article tries to explain the different aspects of choosing the right payment system, making it a pleasure to do business as well as a pleasure for your online customers to transact through your website.

Coverage is a major factor when looking at a Payment Gateway Solution. If you are a local provider doing focused business, you may be able to manage with a Payment Gateway that accepts only Internet Banking as a mode of payment. Many small providers choose to have only Net Banking as an option, as it usually attracts lesser fees. Larger providers must have an array of payment options for their customers to choose from, else they may lose out on competitors offering a more popular method of paying. While transaction fees and commission on a Credit Card Transaction maybe higher, there maybe a lot of customers wanting that extra bit of Credit for some essential household commodity or that essential footwear from your website. If you don't offer the option of Credit Cards, they will just not be able to buy from you. There may also be the budget conscious lot who refuse to use a Credit Card and will insist on paying instantly with a Debit Card. There are also many who prefer Mobile Phone Apps to pay the money.

Another aspect of coverage includes currency coverage. Which currencies your gateway covers determines your reach and scope of doing business. People are most comfortable thinking about a purchase in terms of their own currency. You wouldn't want to bother about the exchange rate and the actual cost of purchasing the goods in another currency.

Fraud Checking is also an important aspect of which payment service provider you choose. Many providers offer multiple layers of verification and checking. Some send a One-Time Password to the mobile phone of the customer, while other have an automated IVRS Phone Call which verifies the Phone Number of the Client. Either way, fraud checking should be the responsibility of the Payment Gateway Provider. You should be free to concentrate on your online business and not have to bother about a payment being disputed.

How soon will you get your money? Many payment gateway providers credit the amount received on behalf of your business, to your bank account only at the end of the month. This may not be very suitable as you may want to use a part of that money for running your business. Some providers also withhold your money until a certain threshold is reached. This is more uncertain, as a dip in sales in future months, will block your previous money as well. This may cause unpredictability and prevent you from planning your budget. But if you are a small business, wanting to pay less fees, you may have to bare with all these restrictions. A larger business has more bargaining power.

How much commission will they take? Commission and fees are an important point to ponder over before choosing a payment gateway. Some charge a fixed yearly fee in addition to a percentage of the sale amount. Other do not charge a yearly fee and instead include it in the percentage of commission per transaction. Some charge lesser for Credit Card Transactions, while some base the commission upon the Volume of business that you can commit. Large shopping websites also offer their own payment gateway services, which charge a lesser fee, in exchange for your client's data or information.

A payment gateway is a pillar of any online business and must be fast, easy to understand and should not be notorious on the safety front. A security conscious customer will definitely be driven away from a shady looking design or archaic format of the payment gateway system. A good example is a popular travel website in India, which was able to do better sales of train tickets as compared to the Government website which was slow and painful to deal with. The maximum failures on the government website were due to the payment system having issues or timing out. It just couldn't handle the load. This increased costs of replying to support emails from angry customers. The e-ticketing website has a quick and easy payment system, which offered to retry the failed bookings. The success rate with this system was visible with the bumper sales. The same can also be achieved by you, with some effort and the right solution.