As a business owner, you understand that change is a good thing – and a necessity. Your business is constantly growing to becoming even bigger and better. That means, of course, that there are some setbacks and roadblocks along the way . After all, what business doesn’t have obstacles to face?
However, you may not necessarily know everything there is to know about how to run your business, and you probably recognize that it is all a learning process. One business aspect that you may be questioning in particular are payment gateways and how they can help your business. Never fear: Allied Wallet’s team has all the answers.
What Is a Payment Gateway?
Payment gateways are an ecommerce application service provider that will authorize credit card payments for online retailers or even traditional brick-and-mortar stores. Essentially, payment gateways are what process credit card transactions. They protect credit card details by encrypting them, which makes sure that the information passed between consumer and business is safe and secure.
By deciding that you are going to accept credit cards online for your ecommerce shop, you will need a way to connect to the banking network to process transactions. This can be done by a bank, a processor, or a third party payment gateway.
When customers buy from an online store, they enter their credit card number during checkout. Your website will transmit that credit card information to your payment gateway to authorize it and process payment. If the credit card information matches information on file with the credit card, then the charge is approved, and the payment gateway will process money from your customer’s credit card account into your merchant account.
How to Choose a Payment Gateway
You will need to understand what the various features of payment gateways really mean—and trying to wade through them can be a task all on its own.
We have compiled a list of “must-have” features for payment gateways, versus “would be nice to have” features:
Must-Haves:
- Multi-currency support
- Quick processing speed
- Multiple settlement options
- Data redundancy
- Customizable email and notification options
- Web-based reporting
- Full, partial, and blind credits
- AVS Support
- Application transparency
- Support availability
- CVV2/CVC2 Support
Nice-to-have:
- Multi-cart support
- Get status
- Change status
- Downloadable supports
- User definable fields
- Recurring payments
- PIN-based debit support
Keep the above in mind when selecting a payment gateway, and it should help you decide what is best for your business.
Why Choose Allied Wallet
We offer customisable solutions for our clients and advice based on years of experience. We can help you and your business find the best payment gateway—one that will not only serve your company, but also your customers. We believe in customer satisfaction for our customers, and our customers’ customers. Give us a ring today to find out how you can move forward.
