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Perfect payment providers do exist. Here’s what to look for in yours.
If you’re looking to set up an e-commerce business, or perhaps upgrade the one you have, choosing a payment provider is one of the first and most important decision you’ll make. Like most things, payment providers aren’t created equal. But then, the perfect one for you is out there if you know what to look for.
If you’re looking for further details, powercash21 – merchant solutions is a great place to find more information.
Chilled out checkout
Your checkout page is essential to the success of your online business. If it’s not functional or too complicated, customers will simply walk away. Many payment providers will offer a customizable payment page that allows you to incorporate your business branding without having to build the page from scratch yourself, and keep the customer experience straightforward and simple to encourage conversion and retention. You also need to make sure they’re compliant with security requirements for processing financial information.
Manage your risk or let your provider do it for you.
Just because you own an e-commerce business doesn’t mean you know everything there is to know about the risks associated with online payments. However, managing risk is essential to maintaining your business, so if you don’t know, hire a provider that does. A good payment provider will have tools for preventing fraud, including velocity checking, BIN lookup, pre-authorization, geo-conflict, and 3D Secure (Verified by VISA / MasterCard Secure Code). They may also be able to flag a ‘false positive’ – a perfectly normal transaction that has been incorrectly suspected of being fraudulent.
Know what’s happening.
As well as being able to manage all aspects of payments on your behalf, your payment provider should also keep you up to date on all transactions with robust, regular reporting. Choose the right payment provider, and they should be able to give you detailed reports on transactions, trends, profitability, and financial settlements. Most will offer a sort of central dashboard where you can manage all your financial reporting in a single place.
The data provided in these reports should be detailed enough that you can then analyze how well your business is doing. This will enable you to plan the future of your business, identify problems, and see what’s going well.
Automate, automate, automate.
The more you can automate, the less you’ll have to do manually. If your payment provider offers automation services, they can improve your efficiency and lower your costs. Look for providers who can process multiple payments at any one time (batch payment processing), or who can set up recurring billing services on your behalf, as these can be particularly expensive and labor-intensive. Recurring billing is also a great way to foster customer loyalty and improve the convenience of their shopping experience.
Security If you’re looking into a payment gateway, it’s essential that your chosen provider is compliant with PCI standards for data security. If you’re working with a provider that requires you to have a separate merchant account, you may need to maintain your compliance yourself – this can be time-consuming. It may be a better idea to find a provider that offers tokenization, which allows you to store a token instead of sensitive payment data. This reduces the cost of maintaining PCI compliance.
