The evolution of ecommerce around the world is continuing as we speak, and there’s no denying the fact that online shopping has boomed – and most everyone we know is doing it and benefitting from it.
And as a business offering ecommerce services to your customers, you need to be able to keep up with the times and provide your customers with a beneficial experience whenever they shop at your site or do a transaction with you. You need to enhance their shopping experience in such a way that it’s easy, fast, convenient, and hassle-free. One way to take care of this is by providing them with various payment gateways so they can take their pick amongst the different choices and leave your site with a much better experience – and more confidence in what you have to offer. But is offering multiple payment gateways really the solution for you? Here’s how you can use multiple payment gateways for better payment processing.
The real advantages of multiple payment gateways for your business
- With multiple payment gateways, you can give your customers a more secure online transaction, since the payment gateway can check as well as validate all transactions which go on in your site. The gateway not only protects your customers – but it also protects you as a merchant, particularly from the risk of fraudulent transactions.
- Multiple payment gateways are easy to use and understand; you don’t have to go through extensive training to benefit from it, nor is the setup difficult.
- Having multiple payment gateways also allows you to benefit from a variety of features. You can customize features according to your needs, and you can make use of such elements as security features, different choices of payment options, and more.
- As already mentioned, when you offer multiple payment gateways, you are essentially offering your customers a much better experience with your business and brand. You are, after all, giving your customers a faster, more trustworthy, and more convenient payment process. Customers can pay with their own currency and payment method, and you can minimize the risk of transactions which are declined or delayed.
- Here’s another thing about multiple payment gateways you should know: various providers will have different fees for particular payment methods as well as varying acceptance rates, so if you use multiple payment providers and gateways, you will be able to reduce your own processing fees and benefit from providers who offer better acceptance rates for different transactions, virtually eliminating declined transactions as well. And if one provider experiences downtime for some reason, there will always be another provider to take care of the transaction, thus contributing to your customer’s overall positive experience.
What to watch out for
But of course, there as some aspects you need to consider carefully as well. You need to know the pros vs. cons of using multiple payment gateway providers. Different payment gateways will have differing processes of integration, which means that you need a special team to integrate each gateway and code it successfully within your system. And once the gateway is integrated, it doesn’t end there. You still have to manage it and take care of issues that arise, which can take a lot of time and effort. Account reconciliation is another factor you have to think about because you have to reconcile the deposits into your bank account, so you know which particular gateway dealt with the transaction. This can take up more of your time, and there may be a risk of errors in this process as well.
But even with all these potential difficulties, having multiple payment gateways can indeed be a big benefit to your business, and there is a solution: a single, unified platform where you can manage all your gateways and providers with ease. With this kind of platform, you can integrate and manage various gateways as quickly as possible, track them, and deal with issues as they arise – and benefit from a much easier and more organized process overall.