Payment gateways are the lifeblood of online businesses.
They help companies to collect money from their customers (online) without using cash. Having an excellent payment gateway for your online business enables you to accept a variety of payment methods (cards, bank transfer, Ussd, etc.) while guaranteeing that your customers’ personal information is secure.
I know that the concept of payment gateways can be technical and hard for an average person, so in this post, I’d break down what exactly a payment gateway is, how it works, and what it can do for your business.
What is a Payment Gateway?
A payment gateway is a software application that integrates your website to payment networks to allow online payments on your platform.
The Process:
- It integrates with your online platform — a company website or e-commerce store.
- It securely captures payment details for customer transactions, i.e. it allows your customers to submit their payment information.
- It sends that information to a payment processor or an acquiring bank to verify the transaction.
- It sends an approval or decline message back to your website to enable the customer to complete their transaction with you or not.
Why Should I Care About Payment Gateways?
If you sell online, you need a payment gateway! If you want to easily collect payment from your customers’ online website, then you need a payment gateway.
- By integrating a payment gateway into your website, you can innovatively offer your customers a seamless customer experience.
- Secure payment gateways help you mitigate the risk of suffering losses through data breaches and credit card fraud.
- As more people continue shopping online, they are always on the lookout for the most seamless and affordable payment option. With a good payment gateway, you can offer your customers a variety of payment methods, thereby improving your customer acquisition rate.
Things to Consider When Choosing a Payment Gateway
- Cost: You need to choose the payment partner that is most affordable for you (and even your customers) in terms of setup fees and transaction fees.
- Security: How secure is your payment gateway? Is it secure enough to prevent your website from getting hacked and your customers’ information stolen?
- Accepted Payment Methods: Does the payment gateway allow different payment methods — such as card, bank transfer, ussd, etc.? This is important because almost 60% of customers will abandon a transaction if their preferred payment method isn’t accepted on your platform.
- Compatibility & Ease of integration: Ensure to choose the payment gateway that is easy to integrate into your website, and that will cause little or no disruptions to your platform.
- Reliability: In our opinion, the most critical factor when choosing payment gateways is reliability. How reliable is the portal? How often does it fail? How many percentages of transactions initiated are successful. If you do not want to lose money and even customers, then do your due diligence and ensure that your payment partners are very reliable.
- Customer Support: You must choose a payment gateway that offers you 24/7 support. Remember that payment gateways are the lifeblood of an online business; so you don’t want to run into difficulties with no help in sight.
For a secure and reliable payment gateway for your business, contact support@korapay.com
