Sunny Gan
Kuala Lumpur, 12 June 2019
by Sunny Gan
The dotcom era has taught us many things in general; we learned from how to shop online to enjoying cashless payment options. As shoppers, our purchasing process is now simplified and shortened, thanks to the e-commerce boom. Nonetheless, online shopping has since become a win-win situation for both customers and sellers; with lesser time spent and reduced overall costs.
However, if you are operating an online business, one of the most important factors to consider is to ensure that your customers enjoy secured and reliable shopping experience. When it comes to payment and checkout, nothing matters more than a customer’s data and privacy are securely protected.
Here are 5 factors to lookout for before choosing a payment gateway for online businesses:
Rule number one of selecting a payment gateway is to ensure that it never compromises the security of customers’ payment information in any way. It should be protecting all the credit card transactions and private information of your customers. Hence, always remember to check if the acquired payment gateway supports the highest security standards imposed by central banks and complies with PCI Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS).
An added layer of security features like the 3D-Secure is mandatory for online transactions on a website. Under this feature, it lowers the chances of fraud cases. Before any payment is processed for deduction, shoppers will receive a One-Time-Password (OTP) code from their registered mobile number to key in on the required field.
When choosing a payment gateway, it is an added advantage to be familiar with the fees structure. Fees are most likely to vary from one company to another but here are some of the common fees that commonly incur:
• Transaction fee (MDR)
Transaction fee (MDR) or better known as “Merchant Discount Rate” is the type of fee that will be charged by the payment gateway on every successful transaction.
• Setup fee
It is a one-time payment to cover the setup of the new account.
• Annual fee
It is a yearly payment for maintenance of the system, technology and support.
First-time business owners may be unfamiliar with the integration process and how it works. Therefore, it is generally more preferred to have a payment gateway that comes with ready-made plugins with various shopping cart providers. This will ease the integration process and create a good shopping platform for shoppers as well. Today, the choice of a local or international shopping cart is vast, thus always conduct research when choosing one.
Another thing worth keeping in mind, is to get a payment gateway that is equipped with fraud protection system to filter each transaction from possible fraudulent activity. Without this function, it increases the possibility of exposing the business to frauds. Moreover, it could be costly to install a protection system separately. Hence, find a trusted payment gateway like iPay88 that provides “ZepSecure” to help monitor transactions and customise security preferences.
Before an online business goes live, study the demographics of your targeted market. This will affect the choice of payment methods needed. However, once the business is on the run, get tools like website analytics as the shipping data could indicate the customers’ country origins. Imagine if a portion of the revenue comes from overseas customers, it will be useful to get a payment gateway that comes with multiple currencies. After all, the business will come off as more appealing if local currencies are accepted for different groups of customers.
In today’s digitally-driven economy, it means that more businesses are going online, with the number of payment gateway providers increasing as well. While choosing the right payment gateway may be a tricky, the process and effort can be greatly narrowed if the right amount of factors are taken into consideration. A reliable and secured payment gateway goes a long way for any type of online business.
