Innovation and benefits of payment gateways for businesses
The payment industry works in a radically different way than it did a decade ago. With the advent of new technologies such as online payments, contactless and applications that effortlessly allow any purchase, have changed the way in which people travel the internet.
But along with the rapid growth of online sales, cyber fraud and therefore the concern of consumers and sellers, making both, are more cautious when choosing the gateways and providers they work with. But what is the current situation and what solutions exist to streamline the process?
With a population of more than 821 million inhabitants in Europe, it is known that 73.5% of users use the internet on a daily basis, meaning that there is a significant growth opportunity for companies that offer their products online. A good example of this has been the 17.8% increase in sales in the UK during 2016, which has put it at the head of a vertiginous sum of 157,000 million euros spent by British consumers.
Another important fact to keep in mind are the platforms that these consumers have chosen to make their purchases with. While card payments remain the most widely used option in most European countries, German, British, French, Italian and Spanish consumers have opted for services such as PayPal, while others such as Poland have preferred Direct payments through its banks and alternative methods of payment offered by Fintech such as DotPay and PayU.
This data makes us understand the behaviour of customers when it comes to buying and on which platforms they trust more. For this same reason, a large number of companies are focusing their efforts on ensuring greater security in providing their customers with the right payment method.
The chart above shows the services and products most purchased online by consumers in each country. In the top 10, we can see how clothing, accessories, books, home electronic devices as well as other products such as toys and leisure were the most attractive.
This trend does not only demonstrates which sector is growing faster but the changing in consumer’s buying behaviour and how they purchase them. While five years ago many of them preferred to buy in stores, nowadays they have chosen to do it more comfortably from home.
But despite these changes, traditional shopping in stores has also remained very high thanks to the acceleration of payment methods such as Contactless and mobile payment.
Currently, there is an average of two devices connected to the Internet per person, and it is expected that by 2020, that number will double more than four devices per inhabitant.
Given the above, it is not surprising that the industry is focusing all its efforts on developing and improving its anti-fraud solutions as well as trying to give to any business, whether physical or online, the option to access the best tools to increase their online sales.
By now you’ve probably read a thousand times the term ‘’payment gateway’’ around the Internet. But whether you are new in the e-commerce industry or not, you’re probably trying to figure things out on your own a little more and might have some doubts or questions about, what it is and how it works.
The term payment gateway refers to the technology that connects merchants to payment networks. It captures client’s payment details and sends that information to an acquiring bank for approval and then sends the bank’s response back to the website. Essentially, it works as a bridge by exchanging information between a website, clients and banks.
Sensitive information such as credit card data and customers and merchant’s private information is then encrypted and travel through a secure environment, guaranteeing that such information passes from one Payment portal to the acquiring bank quickly and safely.
To completely understand why choosing the right payment gateway solution for you is critical, you need to have a sense of the path that a transaction goes through before being confirmed.
The first process starts when a customer buys a service or product online from a seller. Right after a client has entered his credit card details and personal information and clicks on the ‘’buy’’ button, the gateway begins the process. It captures the transaction request and sends all the information to the acquiring bank safely by encrypting it.
Next, the acquiring bank receives the request and gets the authorization by checking if there are funds available and if there is any fraud or risks. Then it generates a positive or negative response, and that information is sent back to the payment gateway.
Finally, the gateway passes that final response to sellers and confirms or denies the transaction.
As you can see, it is necessary to ensure that both the encryption of the information and any other detail is secured during the process.
Passing the payment information from one side to the another might sound easy, but there is much more to take in consideration. The growth of businesses using solutions such as Fintech is mainly due to its benefits. But, how can it contribute exactly to your company?
✓ Agility — payments are streamlined, providing a payment gateway with all global payment methods in a fluid and fast way.
✓ Customer loyalty — a modern solution with the ability to offer a great customer experience, a smooth mobile checkout, and fast payment process for returning customers.
✓ Investment savings — reduce costs and operating expenses
✓ Saving time — Automated management
✓ Risk control — simplifies reconciliation of accounts
✓ Opportunity for growth — any company, large or small can access these services and thus have the same business opportunities.
✓ Better data analysis — the analysis of the information in a single click thanks to the last generation technologies that are used.
Selecting a payment gateway provider can be time-consuming and even sometimes complicated. Yet finding the right one for your website is also essential if you want to succeed in your industry.
For you to increase sales and ensure that your e-commerce is growing, you need to be offering a seamless global payment, and a great customer experience but not every payment can provide these options to your local and international users.
For many businesses, accepting online payments and finding the correct integration of these gateways in their businesses is often their first goal. But even in such an advanced industry, this process can be confusing and often costly.
At SWAPPT, we have worked together and with several companies and businesses to understand the difficulties and their individual needs. If you are looking to increase your income or expand, it is important that you find a tool that provides you with the security and accelerates recurring transactions.
That is the reason why you should choose the one that is appropriate for your business, and that is adapted to your needs.
Cyber fraud is a growing problem around the world and has become a threat to traders and consumers. In recent years, the new security measures that have been implemented in the e-commerce environment, have been able to detect and stop these attacks.
When SWAPPT developers saw an opportunity in improve that gap, they did not hesitate to bring all their clients together to find real solutions to this problem. After several months of research, they opted for an innovative solution that is currently underway.
Businesses that use SWAPPT today can significantly reduce fraud and make the purchase process more efficient without sacrificing customer experience. The primary objective of SWAPPT is not only to prevent these cyber attacks but to offer to businesses a tool that allows them to control and manage their connections with their payment providers as well as their acquirers.
Among its different services, you can find other key features such as Switcher, F.D.S., Vault, B.I., and Helper. All of them are focused on reinforcing security, streamline payments by connecting merchants to all global payment methods as well as a dashboard where you can analyse data and your business evolution.
If you want further details about SWAPPT and how it works, feel free to contact our team of experts and ask for all the information you need about the advantages and the unique integration.
Happy SWAPPTING!!
Originally published at medium.com on August 21, 2017.
