Are you the proud owner of an online business? Congratulations! Owning and managing an online business can be wonderful, but it can also be very stressful sometimes. With so many things to juggle, from inventory to listings and credit card frauds, it can prove to be exhausting running an online business. Through this article, we’ll be giving you all the tea on what a payment gateway integrator is, how safe it is and how you can use it to increase your revenue and expand your business!
In this article, we’re going to be answering all the questions you could have about payment gateway integrators, from what they are to how useful they are to your business, their safety, and integration methods. Anyway, without further ado, let’s get right into talking about payment gateways!
What Is A Payment Gateway?
Well, let’s start from the beginning: a payment gateway is an essential tool that makes it easier for your customers to pay for your products. If you’ve ever shopped for stuff online yourself, there’s a good chance you’ve seen these before. Whenever we want to purchase online, the website takes us to a secure payment gateway to complete the transaction quickly and safely!
All online businesses have this, from giants like Amazon to small businesses on Shopify or eBay. Essentially, the payment gateway works with a third party authenticating the credit card and completing the transaction. These tools are vital for your business since they can do transactions for you and protect you against financial risks like credit card fraud.
Once the payment gateway has gathered all the customer’s information and ensured that there’s no fraud involved, they redirect your customer back to your platform and send you the money! All forms of payment, from credit to debit cards to e-wallets to even bitcoin, manage transactions from this kind of gateway.
How Is A Payment Gateway Useful?
Well, we can answer in several different ways. For starters, a payment gateway makes it easier for your customers to complete their transactions, saving you a lot of money by avoiding the forever sought-after online cart abandoners.
These types of people most often leave their only purchases abandoned because they don’t understand the payment method or find it confusing. No one wants to deal with all that hassle. So, that is probably why these customers close the tab and move on with their day.
Integrating a payment gateway into your platform is extremely important since it optimizes customer experience, especially at check out, which is the most vital part of the experience. Payment gateways are also helpful because this may shock you: not many people use cash anymore. In modern days, cash has become obsolete, and everyone buys everything either by card or online.
What makes payment gateways so valuable is that they make the transaction easier and offer payment options familiar to the customer.
How Does It Work?
While all this technical stuff may make it seem not very easy, it’s pretty easy, especially when thinking about it from a customer’s perspective. If you’ve done any shopping online, you know the drill: you see an incredible product on Instagram, their profile takes you to their website, you add your product to the cart and click on ‘buy.’
The website then takes you to another page where you can put in all your information (safely, of course), and once you click accept, boom, you’re done! You’ll receive your cornflower blue stapler in three to five business days!
But what happens in the background? Well, there are several steps that the system takes to make this process accurate. First, the system gathers all the information and puts it on your server. It authenticates all the information to ensure no credit card fraud, subtracts the amount from their card, and ultimately adds that amount to your server. Once that’s done, it authenticates the transaction, and you’re ready to go.
Is It Safe?
With change comes fear. More so, with brand new technological advancements comes the fear of getting robbed blind. Luckily, this method is not as dangerous at all. For starters, the payment gateway company is held accountable by following specific protocols such as not keeping and later selling customer information. There are many ways to make this process even safer, such as:
- TLS Encryption: a TLS certificate that gives your customer the knowledge that their data is safe
- PCI-DSS Compliance: standardized policy created by credit card companies that make the payment gateway more secure
- Tokenization: creating a token that your customer has to enter, so you know the transaction is being made by them and not someone else (possibly their child stealing their credit card from their purse)
- Two-Factor Authentication: This one also ensures no fraud by asking your customer to give the go-ahead for the transaction and their bank.
To sum up, yes, it’s as secure as it can be!
How Do I Integrate It Into My Platform?
If you’re now convinced that your online business needs a payment gateway (and you’re right because it possibly does), here are some ways to get it.
For starters, you need to decide if you want to use a platform that already has a payment gateway built-in or if you want to add one to your already existing website. If you choose the first option, do some research on the platform you’re using and ensure they follow the necessary protocols. Suppose you’re going for the second option. In that case, you can look into third-party payment gateways like GPay or Amazon Pay, or you can customize it entirely by hiring API software developers to develop your very own payment gateway!
Conclusion
Payment gateways are an essential part of your eCommerce business, which is why it’s essential that, as a business owner, you take charge and figure out exactly which options are best for you. It will not only bring more revenue but also keep you and your customers safe as you navigate the online marketplace!
