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Payment Gateway Selection Criteria

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More and more present-day companies are choosing to sell their core products using payment applications, online websites, and marketplace platforms. These companies are striving to embed payment functionality within their websites and applications. For this purpose, every company needs to find the best payment gateway solution to suit its business model.

The problem of payment gateway integration is common for several categories of companies operating through online websites and apps. These include small and medium-size merchants that want to accept electronic payments for their products. Besides them, there are software vendors, that develop websites and apps for other companies. Finally, there are large online payment platforms and marketplaces that have to support payment functionality within websites of their multiple clients. If a company belongs to any of these categories, at some point it has to integrate a payment gateway into its electronic payment system.

Best payment gateway selection criteria

Selection of the best online payment gateway should be based on several criteria. The top-priority factors, people usually look at, are transaction processing costs and ease of integration. Other criteria concern availability of different features, both basic and advanced, within the payment gateway solution of your choice. For instance, some such features are: smooth transaction settlement, transparent reporting, automated chargeback management, reliable fraud prevention mechanisms, automated deduction of fees, account updater logic for recurring billing etc.

Gateway selection aspects

Payment gateway integration is like a coin: it also has two sides. Heads are the business side, while tails are the technical side.

Business side concerns the terms of your partnership with the payment gateway provider. Many online retailers and other companies that operate through websites and apps are now trying to incorporate payment experience within their business models. In addition, some entities (such as payment software platform providers and marketplace owners) even decide to become payment facilitators themselves. These arrangements provide additional opportunities to save and earn more. So, if you choose to follow a similar business model, it will influence your gateway partnership terms.

Technical side concerns specific solutions and logic you are going to use. These might include payment pages and redirection scripts, credit card tokenization and data encryption mechanisms, support for some particular payment types and merchant category codes.

Gateway selection steps

Now, what should you do to select the best online payment gateway solution to integrate your website or app with? The process involves a sequence of steps to follow.

  1. Reality check. How much money are you expecting to make on a regular basis? Average gateway fees vary between 1 and 2% of transaction amounts. $20,000 worth of transactions processed per month might seem like a lot of money to an average person. However, to a gateway provider it is just about $300 worth of fees collected. Not enough, if you plan to negotiate better terms and additional functionality from the gateway partner.
  2. Data collection. Try to find out, which payment gateway solutions are available at the market. Again, your gateway partner should operate in your target geography, support your target currencies, merchant category codes, and payment types. So, it is possible that you haven’t got much choice, because very few solutions satisfy these criteria.
  3. Cost estimation. At this step you should try to calculate the costs of potential integration and certification works, associated with each payment gateway partnership that suits you.
  4. Technical review. Try to study the interfaces and features of different gateway solutions. Reporting should be transparent and smooth. So, all the fields in the reports should be clearly visible and easily retrievable. Moreover, qualified customer support should be there 24/7.

Are you currently choosing a payment gateway solution to integrate your website or app with? If the answer is positive, feel free to request a free consultation with payment specialists at unipaygateway.com. Having worked within the industry for more than a decade, they will, definitely, have a helpful advice for your particular business case.