For eCommerce businesses, checkout is the last step in scoring a sale. No one wants to lose a customer at that last moment because of an unreliable payment gateway. If you don’t offer multiple secure payment methods, you risk losing many potential sales. In fact, 50% of regular online shoppers would cancel their purchase if their preferred payment method wasn’t available at checkout.
With dozens of payment processing services available, which one should you use for your online store? Our web development team at DigitlHaus has recommended three payment gateways – Paypal, Authorize.net, and Chase Paymentech.
PayPal
Most of us have used PayPal for our online shopping at some point, especially when PayPal was still a subsidiary of eBay. PayPal was and still is the most widely used payment method on eBay, but now it’s grown into a worldwide online payment system that facilitates over $200 billion worth of transaction each year.
PayPal has over 188 million users worldwide. Over 340,000 websites use PayPal as one of their payment processing methods. PayPal’s popularity has already well established itself at a trusted payment platform. This payment gateway doesn’t require any startup costs or monthly fees and accepts all major credit cards. In the United States, PayPal charges the business owners a flat fee of 2.9% of the transaction amount for online purchases.
Authorize.net
Authorize.net is one of the most widely used payment gateways servicing over 400,000 merchants worldwide. This payment processing service has a user-friendly interface and allows you to tweak security settings at different levels. It provides a seamless integration to many eCommerce platforms like Magento, Volusion, BigCommerce, and Shopify.
It accepts all major credit cards and electronic checks. It offers fraud protection services and simple checkout options like most gateways. If you choose to use Authorize.net, you need to pay a $49 setup fee and a $29 monthly fee. Each transaction fee costs 2.9% + $0.30.
One thing to keep in mind, though, is Authorize.net’s lack of data portability. If you ever want to switch to another payment processing service, you’ll have a very hard time transferring your customer data to another platform. If you’ve built a large volume of customer contacts and payment method information, you’ll have to re-input everything manually.
Chase Paymentech – Orbital Payment Gateway
Chase introduced its Chase Paymentech’s Orbital Payment Gateway in 2001 and has been growing ever since. Because of the enormous resources available from its parent company, the gateway is backed by a team of security and data protection experts. Orbital Payment Gateway offers customer profile management that stores customer data via tokenization, helping businesses to fulfill PCI compliance and protecting data in transit and at rest.
Orbital also offers a lower transaction processing fee at 1.65% + $0.25 along with a $9.95 monthly fee. It’s a solution for businesses that are looking to lower the processing cost. However, a contract agreement with Chase Paymentech can sometimes result in a high cancellation fee if you decide to stop using the service before the contract ends. Now, the company offers a month-to-month contract that serves an alternative for businesses who don’t want to make long term commitment.
