CoreCommerce

One of the most common questions asked by merchants is how to choose a payment gateway. Most people have heard about Authorize.net and Paypal, but what is the best for you and your clients? Is it ok to have just one payment option, or should you offer 2, 3 or more choices?

A payment gateway is a company that processes your credit card orders from your shopping cart and sends the money to your account. It’s important to decide which gateway to use because each have their own pros, cons and hoops you have to jump through in order to use them.

When looking for a payment gateway, you should compare and factor in the features and costs of the provider. Here are some questions to ask about which payment provider to use:

• What are the fees? Are they monthly or per transaction? Are there multiple fees? Setup fees?
• What features do they offer, such as fraud protection and virtual terminals? Do I need all these features?
• How reliable are they? Will their site go down when my customers are making a purchase?
• Do the customers need an account to use this service? Is it as easy as putting in your credit card and hitting buy?
• Is it something every customer can use?
• Can I completely integrate the gateway into my cart, or do the customers have to leave the site to checkout?

Ideally you want customers to be able to fill out a short one page checkout form and be done with it. Studies consistently point out that the longer your checkout process is (including the amount of pages you have to go through), the more of a chance you have that customers will abandon the process and go somewhere else.

However not all companies, especially small startups, can afford the startup and monthly fees that complete integration payment gateways charge. So what’s the next solution? Something that’s affordable, easy to use and familiar to your customers.

Your target customers should effect your decision to choose a payment provider. If your audience is made up of 20-40 year olds, who are more likely to be tech-minded and used to the web, then a gateway like PayPal or Google Checkout should be easy and familiar to them. However, if you’re targeting your store to an older crowd, paying for an integrated system may be less confusing and frustrating to them.

If you can, you should also offer multiple choices. If you anticipate a wide range of consumers, offer a fully integrated cart where the customer has to fill out all of their shipping and credit card info, but also offer a third party checkout, such as PayPal. Some customers prefer the speed and ease of just entering their PayPal login info and hitting “Buy”. Others prefer to keep their credit card info private and enter it each time. Offer a variety of choices to make it easier on your customers and to avoid a potential loss of sales.

CoreCommerce offers integration with over 35 payment gateways. View the full list of payment gateway providers we support.