Top 5 Questions Before Choosing the Right Payment Gateway

Every new business owner has tons of questions in their mind, not to mention finding the perfect payment gateway for their online business. From decisions such as the cost of the plan and the features that they require, it always takes more than a month to go back and forth with different payment gateways.

Here, we have listed down the Top 5 questions for business owners to carefully evaluate before choosing a payment gateway.

1. Does the payment system fit my business and customers?

Every business has its own characteristics and nature. As such, choosing the right payment gateway for the most fitting customer base and industry is a must. If you have a market segment from various countries, you should obviously choose a payment gateway that can cater to those regions.

The other important aspect of understanding your market is determining the payment preference of your customers. Keeping in mind the choice of payment options from your payment gateway, it is crucial to equip your business with the payment method that fit your customer base.

2. How reliable and trustworthy is the payment service provider?

Reliability is the key for a payment service provider. Instead of finding a business that is not equipped with vast amount of experience, new businesses should consider finding quality in an experienced payment gateway (even when it comes with a higher price).

When it comes to reliability, a reliable payment gateway would have 99.9% uptime on their server, which shows their expertise in keeping all the transactions alive for close to 24 hours.

A trustworthy payment service provider will give you more than reliability, but also trust from your online customers. With huge brand recognition, you can be guaranteed of lower abandonment rate on your site.

3. What do I want my customers to experience?

Number 3 has three answers:

• Presentable UX & UI
• Fewer of steps in a transaction
• Plenty of payment options

In all cases, you want a payment service that provides you with a customizable checkout box with the fewest number of steps to checkout. Alternatively, customers also feel convenient if they are given their preferred choice for checkout. One customer may want to use a credit card, while others may opt for bank transfer for checkout. It’s important to fulfill buyer needs before losing them to your competitor site.

How big is the customer reach of the service, locally and internationally?

You should ask yourself: how big is your customer base right now and how is it going to be in the next year or two.

Similarly to point one, it is about recognizing your customer base and what they need from the payment service provider. Some of you may need international channels more than others, while local merchants need to have a lot of local channels to process their payments.

A payment gateway with a lot of local and international reach will ultimately help you expand your market segment, as it would provide the tools needed for potential buyers outside your target region to buy your products.

4. What would be the cost of the service?

Every payment service provider has its own rates, whether it’s a fix rate or a special rate for features that you will eventually use. It comes back to all the previous questions above to determine the right rate for your business.

However, you need to keep in mind the quality vs. cost on the service that you will take.

After answering and judging the questions from above, it becomes your sole responsibility to choose the best service for your product. In the end, a payment service provider will be your best friend throughout the length of your business, so please choose it wisely...