subject: Best Online Payment Services For Your Internet Business [print this page] When setting up an online business, one of your first and major concerns should be choosing the right payment provider for your Internet business.
Starting Out with a Payment Gateway
An online payment service is generally referred to as payment gateway, the Internets answer to a land-based point-of-sale (POS) terminal. Payment gateways, regardless of whos providing the service, perform the same function: they facilitate payment between the e-merchant (thats your business!) and his customer.
When a person shops in your site, a payment gateway will be the one that performs the following steps: determine how much a customers order totals; compute the persons delivery costs and other charges if any is applicable; process the customers contact information, store and send it to another party when necessary; receive information from the customers bank or chosen payment method; and lastly, finalize and confirm order status so that it can be packaged immediately to the customer.
Factors to Consider When Choosing an Online Payment Service Provider
Take your time when looking for an online payment service provider because the wrong choice can easily make you lose the credibility of your store and the trust of your customers.
Safety Can the online payment service provider completely guarantee the safety and confidentiality of your clients account details? What steps have they taken or will take to provide security? If something goes wrong, what guarantee can they make to rectify the situation?
Setup How much time will it take for them to provide you with the necessary services? What requirements should you submit? Are they reasonable? Is there a setup fee you have to pay? If so, is it worth the service youll be expecting from them?
Features Does it accept all kinds of online payment transactions or is it exclusive to one method such as accepting Visa and Mastercard only? What other benefits can it give you? What does it have that other online payment service providers dont?
Other Charges Will you have to pay any membership fee? Will you have to pay commission for every product sold and paid using their services?
Speed How long does it take them to process an order? How long before you receive payment?
Customer Support Do they offer you 24/7 customer support so that theres always available assistance whenever something goes wrong with the transaction process?
Best Online Payment Services for Your Internet Business
Its best if you choose a combination of several of the online payment service providers below because its unlikely that all of your clients are using the same provider. If you want to achieve 100% customer satisfaction, give your customer the opportunity to use their preferred payment method.
PayPal This is arguably the most famous online payment service provider today. PayPal is a user-to-user payment method. If you do not have an account with PayPal, you wont be able to make or receive the necessary payment. Setting up a PayPal account is fairly easy although there has been some complaints regarding its online safety.
Authorize.net An online payment service provider with a large network of members, Authorize.net can offer fairly reliable and comprehensive payment services for your business. It primarily allows you to process various credit cards for payment. If you wish to avail of their services however, you would have to make your inquiries over the phone.
Secure-Bank.com Another online payment service provider that gives business owners a wide array of payment methods to choose from. It can, for instance, accept both credit cards and check drafts and has a detailed program to provide the highest degree of security against online fraud to their customers.
2Checkout.com While this is not necessarily an online payment service provider, it still allows you to facilitate transactions because youre selling your products and services through them. Members of this site will also enjoy free setup and support of payment gateways.
CyberCash This is a good online payment service provider if you wish for your business to not only be able to accept credit card payments but those via electronic checks as well.
Econnect This is a simple online payment service provider that allows you to accept credit card payments and process details even from debit cards then sending it safely to the bank.
Lastly, before registering for any account, consider making a raw survey of your market to gain an idea of their preferred payment method.
