12. Payment Pages
In previous sections, I covered topics on operations and processes, now I will touch upon integration an to begin with, payment page. Payment Page is the page where customer selects the payment method (cards, net-banking, wallet, payment container, UPI, credit products etc.) to start the transaction.
Below are the various possibilities in payment pages
A. Payment aggregator hosted page (Non-Seamless or redirection flow)
Payment page is hosted by aggregator. When customer clicks on ‘pay’ button, customer is redirected this page to select the payment method and proceed with transaction.
Pros: (a) Simple integration so less effort
Cons:
- Merchant will not have control on page design
- Aggregator many not have all payment methods
- If save card option is enabled then cards are saved with aggregator (locked-in)
- If merchant decides to add multiple aggregators then have to add one radio button for each aggregator. Such arrangement gives bad user experience and merchant won’t have control on performance or commercial optimisation.
B. iFrame
Merchant can embed the aggregators iFrame into merchant’s website. Over all look of the page is in merchant’s control except the iFrame part
Pros: Little better control on page look and less effort in integration
Cons: Cannot add multiple aggregators or add radio button for each aggregator
C. Merchant hosted page (Seamless Flow)
Payment page is hosted by merchant where merchant will list all applicable payment methods. To enable such flow, merchant has to request its aggregators, banks, wallets to enable ‘seamless flow’ for merchant’s Live Id.
Pros:
- Better control on page design
- Flexibility to add multiple aggregators, banks and payment methods to increase payment method coverage
- With routing logics, merchant can optimise performance and commercials
Cons:
- Requires effort to maintain the page
- Integration effort will be high when merchant adds new payment partners
- High development effort to write and maintain transaction routing logics
- Need card vault strategy to provide uniform user experience
Working of Seamless Flow:
Firstly, aggregator, banks should enable merchant in ‘seamless flow configuration.
Each aggregator, wallet, banks issue a unique Live Id for merchant. Each bank, wallet of aggregator also have unique code (e.g. bank code). So with combination of Live Id and Bank Code merchant can route transaction.
Merchant can use seamless, iFrame or redirection flows of Technical Solution Providers (E.g.: JusPay). Such TSP arrangements help merchant to add new aggregator/payment method without much effort and provide uniform save card flow. I will cover TSPs (JusPay) in a separate chapter
Look at Swiggy’s payment page, isn’t is awesome??But to reach the present stage, it took them years of effort. So payment pages are not static but keep evolving and there is always room to improve design and flows.
Next Section: Card Vault / Save Card
