No matter what, if you are an online retailer you will need to use an online payment gateway to boost your business growth. Wondering how? Over 50% of customers bounce back and visit competitor sites if they don’t find flexible payment options on the checkout page. This proves you need to have all kinds of payment options that are trending to keep up with your customers.

And the only best solution is to set up online payment gateways for your business as they have gained amazing popularity within a short time due to various benefits. Not only have they become a must for eCommerce companies but also for every business. It is because not just you need to earn some profits from your customer’s transactions but you also need to pay your clients to run your business. Moreover, the transactions made through online payment gateways are faster, more secure, and encrypted. So that you can forget worrying about your transactions and their security and focus on building new strategies to grow your business.

When planning about setting up online payment gateways, most people get confused about online payment gateways and virtual terminals. Both of them are used by merchants to process credit card payments, but they are not the same. A payment gateway is different than a virtual terminal completely. An online payment gateway is a middleman between customers and merchants that processes the money from customers to merchant bank accounts. Whereas a virtual terminal is a web page where your credit card payments are processed when a business owner or his team enters the payment details. A virtual terminal is almost the same as a physical credit card machine in a brick-and-mortar business.

As most people do not prefer carrying cash or credit cards every time, online payment gateways gained massive popularity. Although most businesses use both payment gateways and virtual terminals not only to offer different payment methods to their customers but also to enjoy the security they provide both to business and customer data.

Apart from secure transactions, there are many other reasons to use online payment gateways for your business. Let’s see them in detail.

Top 10 reasons to use online payment gateways

Faster & Secure Transactions

Payment gateways such as Paypal are faster than any other payment method. You can receive payments 50 times faster than you do before. Overall, you can ship the products to your customers as early as possible and provide a great experience. As the process of confirming payments takes just a minute or two, both customers and merchants need not wait to finish the last step which is completing the transaction.

A payment gateway is customer-facing and is a matter of a few seconds. This is how an online payment gateway works:

• A customer selects the products and clicks on the checkout button.
• He is taken to the checkout page where he needs to select his preferable payment gateway and enter his payment information.
• The payment gateway receives the approval or decline message from the customer’s bank.
• Merchant starts shipping the products if he receives approval from the bank.
• The amount is settled by the customer’s bank to the payment gateway which clears the money to the merchant’s bank account.

The transactions are well encrypted and secured at each stage by payment gateways. Hence, your customer’s data and as well as your information is in safe hands.

Inexpensive setup costs

People often think setting up online payment gateways might end up adding a burden gradually to businesses. But they are wrong. Though payment gateways cost setup fees, per-transaction fees, chargeback fees, etc. they are worth it. Moreover, you can avoid some of those by doing proper research and finding the best payment gateway provider that satisfies the essential requirements of your business.

Some of the payment gateway providers cost zero amount for set up, while some provide an option to transfer some amount of fees to customers and some cost lower charges per transaction.

You will stay on trend

As online payment gateways provide faster, more secure, and easier transactions, these are going to be on top of all payment methods even in the far future. So, it is not too late for you to set up an online payment gateway for your business. You are going to lose your customers if you don’t offer them a convenient method of payment. Remember, there are many other businesses in your niche that are already using online payment gateways.

Time-saving payment method

Though the transaction process of payment gateways looks difficult, confusing, and lengthy, they take only a couple of minutes to finish the process. Hence customers can experience an easy checkout process which in turn increases customer satisfaction.

Online payment gateways help merchants to pay their clients within a few minutes. Hence they can no longer keep their clients waiting for receiving the bills. Therefore, a positive rapport is built among both merchants and clients which helps future collaborations.

Increased customer experience

No customer wants to waste his time shopping at a website where he doesn’t find his favorite payment option. Having that said already, a website that offers faster, easier, and more secure checkout is likely to gain double the profits. Moreover, offering swift, easy, secure, and convenient payment options increases customer satisfaction which in turn helps your business to grow.

Accept worldwide orders round the clock 

Anybody with internet access can order your products online from anywhere in the world at any time if you have the resources to deliver. Online payment gateways accept different currencies and convert them making your business much easier. They accept payments 24*7*365 days to increase the customer experience. The only thing you need to do is check if your payment gateway offers this feature before you integrate it with your website.

Reduce declined transactions

A payment gateway checks for the funds available in the credit card right at the moment the customer enters his payment details. It gets either an approved or declined payment during the initial stage of the transaction only. Hence, the merchant can process the order only if he gets bank approval from the customer’s bank. Hence there is no need to run after customers to finish their payments, therefore zero declined transactions. Online transaction security is one of the top priorities in the payment gateways. Both clients and merchants want to be sure of the safety of their funds. As cyber-attacks are widely spread, IT specialists like network engineers are in great demand.

Improve cash flow

As you are serving the customers only after you receive bank approval from the customer’s bank, there are no declined transactions. Moreover, the money will be credited to the merchant bank account within 2-3 business days hence there will be an increase in your cash flow. You need not wait for your amount for a longer time as payment gateways always process the money faster.

Automation

Online payment gateways reduce the labor work as they solely take care of each step of the transaction process as these are Card Not Present transactions. Your team need not enter the customer’s credit card information on any virtual terminal nor guide the customer to proceed with the next step. Customers can finish the transaction on their own without anybody’s help as the process is quite simple. Merchants can set up automatic withdrawals with recurring bills and avoid late payments, establish steady cash flow using online payment gateways.

Fraud screening tools

Protecting the customer’s sensitive information and escaping from chargebacks is a daunting task for businesses. Online payment gateways come along with fraud screening tools that help you protect the cardholder’s data and secure all the transactions with AVS, and CVV. Payment gateways offer customer vault and fraud testing so that businesses can stay away from fraudulent transactions. The fraud screening tools decline the transactions right at the moment they detect fraudulent actions and keep the data safe.

Conclusion

Late payments to clients and late deliveries to customers due to delays in transactions are only the bad signs that stop your business from growing. When you have the option to run your business faster and smoother, why do you need to lay back? Setting up online payment gateways not only makes your business run efficiently and swiftly but also protects you against online fraud with fraud screening tools. Moreover, with every step you take to protect and secure your business and customers’ data, you are impressing your customers. Therefore you finally earn some trusted and happy customers for your business which will lead to massive growth shortly.

From retailcustomerexperience website