Finding the best payment gateway

This article will discuss finding the best payment gateway. The term “payment gateway” has become highly pervasive in the business world, as it represents a key utility necessary to taking advantage of ever-increasing ecommerce options.

THE BEST PAYMENT GATEWAY

A payment gateway is an integral component if you want to accept credit cards online.  Basically, it facilitates transactions by functioning as a portal, linking your shopping cart to your merchant account, which in turn will deliver your funds into your bank account. At minimum, it should also include recurring billing, fraud detection features, as well as tools to calculate shipping/handling and sales tax for your customer.
And while the concept is simple enough, there are certainly differences among competing payment gateways that separate the mediocre from the best payment gateway.

WHAT FEATURES SHOULD I BE LOOKING FOR IN A BEST PAYMENT GATEWAY?

First and foremost, you’ll want reliable customer service.
This means that you should be able to get in contact with a real person, whom you can effectively communicate with, in a reasonable amount of time. This sounds like an easy one, but it’s pretty astounding how many companies can’t offer this simple, yet critical, feature.

INTEGRATION CAPABILITIES

A good payment gateway will have the capacity to be integrated with a variety of different shopping carts. This is essential to not only having a seamless transaction at present, but also to ensuring open and available options in the future.

TRANSACTION ROUTING AND THE BEST PAYMENT GATEWAY

You’ll find that, when looking for a payment gateway, this feature is more difficult to come by – but it’s extremely important. If you are expecting to sell more than a few thousand dollars’ worth a month, you’ll need to split your volume across multiple merchant accounts.  Having one merchant account just isn’t safe anymore.  The key is making sure your payment gateway has the ability to route transactions across multiple merchant account.

FAIR MONTHLY FEES

This seems like a no-brainer, but some companies will try to include sneaky fees, hoping you won’t notice. When selecting a payment gateway, it’s important that what you’re paying is justified by the services you’re receiving. It’s highly important for you to be aware of exactly what services are included in that monthly cost, as the add-ons can add up.  For example, a lot of gateways charge an additional monthly fee for the ability to do recurring billing.  This should be a standard feature.

I WANT TO ACCEPT PAYMENTS NOW