Anyone who founds an e-commerce business stumbles sooner or later on the question of a customer-friendly payment process. However banal it may sound: No online shop without online payment. As an online trader, you have the possibility to negotiate with each payment provider individual contracts, complete integration, and continuous up-to-date plugins. This is perhaps the most cost effective way for you, although the most time-consuming.
To offer your customers a convenient checkout process, you want to provide them with their preferred payment method. To avoid this effort, many online shop traders choose a payment service provider (PSP). A payment service provider interfaces between your e-commerce and the various payment providers.
This blog post will take you through every important aspect you should consider in order to find the right payment service provider for your online business activities.
Your payment selection makes the success of your online sales
Before choosing a payment service provider, you should ask yourself which markets you want to target, which currencies are used there and which are the preferred payment methods. Payment by credit card is a very common payment method, but not every country process VISA and Mastercard only. Depending on the country market, specific regional solutions can also be added, such as, for example, Sofort Überweisung in the German speaking DACH region or iDEAL in the Netherlands. In Germany, especially SEPA Direct Debit and Invoicing are required. Thus, if you know which market you want to target, your payment service provider should also offer the appropriate payment methods.
Think of your future payments
Keep in mind, after a certain period of time your online sales will probably also grow and open up new markets. Therefore, when choosing your payment service provider, make sure a broad portfolio of international payment methods is offered.
Depending on which business model you have and in which industry you are active, subscription functions and recurring payments can also be a key offering. For example; you are active in the food industry and you are selling food boxes? Or, you sell toys on subscription? Then your payment service provider should offer recurring payments.
Extensive studies have shown in the last few years: the greater the choice of payment methods, the lower the rate of buy-outs. Therefore, make the following clear: choosing the payment options determines the success of your shop.
Customize your check out process
To ensure your customers feel secure during the entire Customer Journey with the checkout process it is for instance highly suggested not to forward to external pages. This can make your customers feel insecure and leads to unnecessary bounce rates. Therefore, make the payment process as transparent as possible for your customers and integrate your payment solution directly into your online shop with the adequate PCI level protection.
Choose a payment service provider, who is flexible enough to adapt to the circumstances of your shop environment. With flexible API integration, it is possible to make your web checkout as branded as possible. It should be 100% customizable to your needs and should provide libraries in all common programming languages. A Web API integration is particularly suitable for e-commerce or SaaS companies.
Mobile first
Mobile commerce is not longer future music. Online retailers have to deal with this trend urgently this year, in order not to fall behind. Therefore, you should also set up your web shop mobile payment compatible. Your payment service provider should be able to integrate mobile payments into your shopping app – both for iOS and for Android.
Think also of offering one-tab checkout as a special gimmick to your regular customers, customer token or alias created then stored and provided during the payment process. This saves your customers the annoying re-input of their data and a safe re-shopping on his next visit.
If you use shopping carts like Shopify or Lemon Stand for your web store, good PSPs are pre-integrated. Even for platforms like Magento, Woocommerce or Shopware, simple plugins are sufficient to integrate your payment solutions. No programming knowledge is required. Easy to install and sit back.
Provide security with your online payment
Security plays an important role in the sensitive data and finance issue. Therefore, when choosing your payment service provider, be sure to use security measures such as an integrated fraud, regular updates, and security checks. This is the only way to ensure that your customers’ data is protected during transactions. The data of each transaction should be matched with a global blacklist. A good PSP also allows you to report fraud cases and optionally provides additional security measures.
Verify that your payment service provider is PCI DSS-compliant. This is an international security standard for the storage, processing and transmission of credit card data. Independent security experts regularly review PSP´s that comply with this standard, offering greater security.
If you choose Visa and MasterCard payments, you can also ensure that the customer is the actual owner of the card by including 3-D Secure. This avoids the risk of reimbursement and Chargeback.
The customer-friendliness, security and transparency of the entire payment process are key for the success of your purchase agreements. Therefore, a qualified payment service provider will always be worth the investment in the long term.
e-commerce marketing
