Ecommerce Payment Gateways
An ecommerce payment gateway is a separate service from the ecommerce website itself as the payment gateway acts as an intermediary between your shopping cart and the various financial networks involved with the transaction, including your customers account and your merchant account.
The actual process is seamless and the customer does not directly interact with the payment gateway since all necessary data is forwarded to the gateway via the shopping cart. Depending on the integration method used to link the gateway with your website, this information is normally passed via a secure connection (SSL). The shopping cart is able to send all necessary information to the payment gateway so that the customer’s details can be processed correctly.
There are many different Payment Gateways available, each with their own benefits and drawbacks.
Popular Payment Gateways
The most popular payment gateways for small to medium businesses are payment gateways such as WorldPay, Protx or PayPal. Each of the payment gateways offers a different kind of service that will benefit different companies.
PayPal Payment Gateway
PayPal is a payment gateway that allows the user to use the payment gateway on the PayPal website or on your own website. However, having the payment gateway on your own website will cost more in the long run due to the SSL certificate requirements but gives a more professional service to your own website.
The advantages of PayPal include the use of a merchant account to process credit card transactions. However, the rates charged by PayPal are sometimes higher than various competitors. Additionally, PayPal is a perhaps the most widely known and trusted name in on-line shopping and secure transactions which ensures you visitors can shop on your site with confidence.
Learn more about PayPal
WorldPay Payment Gateway
WorldPay offers two different payment services:
- Internet Merchant Account and Payment Services
- Payment Services Only
The WorldPay Internet Merchant Account offers an easy way to start up your own merchant account with a bank since WorldPay is part of the Royal Bank of Scotland.
This confers an advantage to WorldPay since it is another service offered by the Royal Bank of Scotland and many retailers will already have a merchant account that is used in conjunction with their Streamline POS machine. Due to this, the per-transaction charges are normally lower.
Learn more about WorldPay
Protx Payment Gateway
Protx offers three different packages to the small to medium business. The packages that Protx has on offer are small, corporate and bespoke.
Learn more about Protx Small Package
Learn more about Protx Corporate Package
Learn more about Protx Bespoke package
Protx has a number of advantages and disadvantages you can learn about from each package. The best advantage of Protx is perhaps their extremely competitive transaction fees for on-line shops that process less than one thousand transactions per quarter.
