The Importance of Payments for an eCommerce Business

As a startup or small business the payment provider you chose for your eCommerce site is of high importance. You should be thinking about the user and the smoothest payment journey possible.

At Gloople, we saw the importance of the perfect payment provider from the beginning. We have met with over 18 different PSP, ISO and Acquirers from the new kids on the block; Stripe, Paymill, Braintree all the way to HSBC, Securetrading, Ogone, Skrill, Paypal, Realex, Google Checkout, Amazon Payments and many, many more.

Generally, as a small business, payments fall into the below categories;

• Credit and debit cards

• Electronic payments

• Direct transfer

Before you can choose the right payment provider for your business, you need to think about the kind of goods and services your business is selling. Credit and Debit card payments are the most popular type of payment method as the online world has developed over the years.

If your business trades online and has a physical store, you should offer credit and debit card payments. If your store is online only, you should be using payment systems like PayPal to make sure the checkout process is efficient. If your business sells to other businesses, you should look at credit transfer via the BACS system.

If you are spending your time searching for the perfect payment gateway, you should ask yourself;

• Have I read the small print? – make sure you’re not getting yourself into a long term contract with extra payments that will crop up. A lot of businesses will try and hide the information which you may disagree with in their small print.

• What’s the support like? – With the eCommerce world in constant action, you need support to be there when you really need it.

• Is my online payment gateway and shopping basket compatible? – You will need to check this to make sure your shopping cart can be integrated.

• Are there going to be hidden costs? – This can sometimes be overlooked so you need to be aware of any potential hidden costs such as multi-currency payments ect.

• Does my payment gateway come with anti-fraud? As you develop your site, you need to pick a payment provider that can provide the basic anti-fraud tools.

• Can I see the sales figures? – you should be looking to analyse your sales data all the time so chose a payment provider that will help manage your sales data.

The process of finding the right payment system has taken over three months of preparation with meeting after meeting followed by proposals. I am now in the process of sitting down with the Gloople team where we will, collectively chose the right partner for OUR customers. As a platform it is important that we give our merchants (brands and retailers) the simplest and quickest solution to help them start selling the day they sign up.

I hope when that when the time comes, you will have the right information to pick the payment provider suitable for your eCommerce site. In next weeks blog I will be going into more detail around the positives and negatives, to the various payment providers I have mentioned and their monthly fees, percentage and fixed fees per transaction.