With so many consumers taking their shopping online, opening an ecommerce store can be a huge boost for a small business. According to the Department of Commerce, comprehensive online sales for the first quarter of 2016 were over $92 billion, a 3.7% increase from the fourth quarter of 2015. This makes an ecommerce payment system one of the top priorities for a digital storefront.
Online shopping is becoming so popular it makes up nearly 10% of all sales nationwide. With eCommerce becoming more popular every year, small businesses can’t afford to miss the opportunity to capture customers and sales available when running an online store.
Some of the many advantages of doing business online include:
- Stores are open for business 24/7.
With no limit on opening hours, consumers across the world can access the website at their convenience and make purchases.. - Reduced overhead costs.
Though the launch of a website may require a large initial investment, over time, a business owner recoups that investment, as they don’t have to pay for rent, utilities, and staff. - A larger customer base.
Store location, convenience, and transportation issues are obstacles that plague physical store locations. Without those nuisances, business owners can reach audiences around the world. - Expanded reach to national or even international audiences.
Online services don’t experience the normal restrictions of brick and mortar stores, so they can reach audiences everywhere. - Better marketing opportunities.
Beyond placing advertisements in magazines and newspapers, websites are automatically indexed and ranked by search engines. If a website’s quality, content, and navigation are outstanding, search engines show this business first on result pages. Beyond investing time and energy into an excellent website, this service is performed automatically with no cost to business owners. - More intuition when it comes to consumers’ habits and needs.
Working online allows a business to profile consumers based on shopping habits, region, keyword, and more. Target specific groups that are more likely to be interested in your services. Then, provide them a simple, secure checkout experience.
Set Your Site Apart
Opening an eCommerce site offers many potential benefits for small business owners including increased customer base, lower overheads, and the ability to make sales 24/7. However, business owners still need to provide their customers with a user-friendly shopping experience and a safe and secure checkout process.
The payment processor you choose for your site will have a definite impact on the shopping experience of your customers. Your site needs to provide a seamless checkout and payment experience to increase completed transactions and reinforce continued patronage. Give your customers the peace of mind they want by using the most secure ecommerce payment systems on your online store.
The Importance of a Payment Processor
When customers visit your eCommerce store, they’re looking for a good deal on a product or service and an easy and secure payment process. The payment gateway that you choose for your eCommerce site should instill trust in your clients as they make their purchases.
Secure payment processing facilitates the transfer of online payments, client data, and other sensitive information and protects against fraud and other security issues.
Shortcomings of Online Payment Processing
It’s true that online shopping is becoming more popular due to its ease and affordability. But that doesn’t mean eCommerce is without flaws or shortcomings. There are challenges that smaller companies face when doing business online. While eCommerce security and payment systems can protect against fraud and security threats, there is still a threat of security breaches for online stores.
Credit Card Fraud
Online payment transactions are “card not present” transactions. This type of financial transaction provides greater opportunity for credit card fraud. Stolen credit card numbers and other personal information can be used to make purchases without the consent of the cardholder.
Because the acquiring bank, hosting the merchant account must pay restitution for any damages caused by stolen credit cards, some issuers charge exorbitant fees to merchants who routinely perform card not present (CNP) transactions.
The best way to avoid credit card fraud is to employ a payment processor that verifies user information through fraud scrubbing technology.
Chargebacks
There are two types of chargebacks that can damage the operations of a business: distribution chargebacks and consumer chargebacks. In the distributor arena, chargebacks occur when your supplier charges you a higher price for a product that you charge the consumer. Recouping the loss is difficult, and often a merchant takes the loss instead of chasing after a supplier.
Consumer chargeback can occur for any merchant that accepts credit card payments. When a fraudulent customer makes a purchase with a stolen card or an actual customer does not receive goods or services, the bank that issued the customer their credit card forces a business to refund the purchase.
Consumer chargebacks can do serious damage to your business and you may be required to pay higher processing rates and fees or face the possiblity of losing your merchant account altogether. High-quality payment processors make it difficult for fraudulent transactions to occur, thereby lessening the possibility of chargebacks.
International Currency
A key benefit of operating an online store is the ability to expand your marketplace around the globe. You can sell your goods and services virtually anywhere with internet access. However, not all payment processors have the necessary infrastructure to convert and engage international transactions.
You need to set up an ecommerce payment system that specializes in international currencies. Even if you don’t operate internationally today, you may want to expand your business to a global marketplace tomorrow.
Integration and Compatibility
Setting up an online store isn’t easy. You need to ensure your shopping cart software, inventory management software, shipping database, and communications network are working in sync before you even begin to integrate your payment processing gateway. In other words, a lot can go wrong with technological integrations.
The eCommerce security and payment systems you choose need to seamlessly integrate with your existing software, hardware, and website.
How to Address Security Concerns
As a small business owner, there are a number of steps you can take to ensure your online security is strong. Focusing on security early and often will help your eCommerce site avoid damaging data theft and fraud. You can also learn what consumers care about when it comes to online shopping scams to make sure you’re covered against such issues.
Data Storage
Each transaction completed on your site is an opportunity to gather useful data on your customers and the goods and services they’re most interested in. While gathering information on your customers is useful and even necessary to complete transactions you need to ensure all gathered data is securely stored.
Limiting the amount of data you store can minimize the possibility of data theft. What’s more, customers are wary of websites that request too much information. Requiring minimal info from your customers limits the possibility for fraud while maximizing customer retention.
SSL
SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is a set of cryptographic protocols that provide security during digital communications for eCommerce payment systems. Most websites utilize SSL to protect web browsing, email, messaging, and financial transactions.
SSL encryption increases the difficulty of hacking or data theft. Furthermore, it validates the identity of your website. SSL makes your website more secure by providing data encryption and website recognition.
The Importance of Details
Check transaction details thoroughly. If a sales or transaction seems too good to be true, it probably is. Operators of eCommerce sites should always verify credit card information.
Fraud scrubbing technology verifies and matches ISP and physical address data to ensure correct billing and shipping information. In the same way, suspicious shipping information or incorrect billing information should be verified with the customer.
Choose a Professional
As you can imagine, the eCommerce payment system you set up on your online store plays a big role. That’s because security is of utmost importance to your customers’ shopping experience.
With so many options available for online shopping these days the quality of product, customer service you provide, and trustworthiness of your site is more important than ever. In this way, your choice in payment processing and security can have a real impact on the bottom line of your business.
You need to partner with a proven professional that understands the challenges of digital payment processing and operating an eCommerce site.
Allied Wallet
Allied Wallet offers customized payment processing solutions for businesses of all sizes, including new and small eCommerce sites. Give your customers the peace of mind they need with payment processing from Allied Wallet.
State of the Art Security
It’s obvious that one of the biggest challenges facing online stores is security. Allied Wallet offers customized
security features that fit the needs of your online shop. When eCommerce payment systems work to ensure security and protection, your customers can shop confidently.
Allied Wallet features customisable fraud scrubbing, secure SHA-256 SSL data encryption, and PCI-DSS Level 1 compliance to keep your customers’ data and financial information safe and secure.
Our state-of-the-art security features keep credit card information and other financial data secure. Our customisable combination of security features minimize the risk of data theft and lets you put your focus where it needs to be—running your business.
Go International
One of the many services that set Allied Wallet apart is the ability to process transactions internationally. If you want to take your goods and services to a global market, Allied Wallet can help you get there, as we can process 164 currencies in 196 countries.
Accepting multiple currencies gives you the flexibility to operate wherever your customer base is located, whether it’s in a remote location, overseas, or at home. You can also accept foreign currencies without paying costly conversion fees.
Easy Integration
Allied Wallet’s payment processing integrates easily with all the top shopping cart software. One of our greatest strengths is just how easy it is to implement our services. Remove the hassles and headache of trying to integrate incompatible software programs and choose a payment processor that works with any programming language and dozens of popular shopping cart systems.
Be Open for Business
Opening an online store is a necessity these days. Modern consumers expect to be able to shop from their phones and computers anytime of day. They also expect to be able to use their payment cards in a safe and easy to use checkout process.
Give your customers what they want with Allied Wallet. Our eCommerce payment systems work seamlessly with your needs to give your customers a satisfying shopping experience.
What are you waiting for? Find out more about our merchant services today!
