What is the best website payment system?
If you have an ecommerce website, it’s important to choose the right platform for your business. Depending on the size of your business, each platform with have its own benefits. Below are a few helpful tips on what to look out for and what is the best website payment system for you.
Customer confidence
You need to make sure that the checkout process for the customer is smooth and looks professional otherwise they could abandon the website and go elsewhere, losing you money. Giving the customer more than one choice of payment method can also be beneficial as some may only prefer to just use PayPal for example whilst others don’t mind using their credit or debit card.
Cost
Depending on the payment provider, they could charge a monthly or signup fee, a transaction fee per order or even both. The fees can also depend on the number of products you sell. Make sure you check the fine print to see if there are any hidden charges.
Integration with your ecommerce website
Another thing to consider is to find out how easy it is to integrate with your ecommerce site. You need to find out if the payment gateway is available for your website platform and if there are any additional costs for your developer to integrate it, e.g. a payment gateway may work well in a WordPress website but not so well in a Umbraco website.
What platforms are available to me?
There are a lot of payment gateways out there, below are a few of the popular ones.
PayPal
PayPal is one of the most well-known and trusted payment providers and charge 3.4% + 20p per transaction. It is also used, and owned, by one of the biggest websites in the world, eBay. PayPal usually release funds within 24 hours to the nominated bank account and is simple to set up on your website.
Unless you go for the PRO account, which is £20 per month, users will be redirected to the PayPal website to finalise the checkout process meaning they leave your website. You need to consider if this is what you want to happen, or would you prefer visitors to pay straight through your website.
Pros: Great for start-ups and familiar to most website users.
Cons: Redirecting from your website to PayPal may not give the professional look you may be after.
More info: https://www.paypal.com/uk/home
Stripe
Stripe is a lot cheaper than PayPal and charge from 1.4% + 20p per transaction. The downside is they hold the funds for a 7 days (UK) then deposit it in to your chosen account. This is apparently getting shorter in 2019. For integration purposes this is simple to implement in most website platforms.
Pros: The whole checkout process is nice and tidy as the customer remains on your website.
Cons: May require a little configuration from a web developer to integrate it on your website.
More info: https://stripe.com/gb
Worldpay
Worldpay is another big payment provider, which doesn’t require any signup fees. Transaction fees are a little more involved and they charge 2.75% + 20p (PAYG) or £19.95 pcm + 2.75% for credit cards/0.75% for debit cards (monthly plan). They make two deposits a week to your chosen bank account too. With Worldpay, the customer will be redirected to the Worldpay website to finish the transaction.
Pros: Highly recognised and secure with a variety of excellent supporting tools.
Cons: Can be complicated to actually begin using it as you will need to make sure your website and network is PCI compliant.
More info: https://www.worldpay.com/uk
Square
Square is a relatively new gateway and is ideal for businesses who wish to take card payments as well as website payments. Square also provides some lovely touchscreen hardware for businesses who sell in a bricks and mortar store as well as online.
Pros: Sync your stock levels in-store and online with centralised inventory and PoS software.
Cons: It’s a bit of a learning curve to get everything set up and finding your way around.
More info: https://squareup.com/
Conclusion
Choosing a payment provider may be not the most exciting part of an ecommerce website but it’s important to think about it carefully as it could help you reduce long-term costs. So, what is the best website payment system? It depends on what is the right solution for your business so take time to research more into which payment provider is best for you. Don’t be afraid to ask other business owners what they have used and get their feedback or feel free to get in touch with us for some free advice.
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