Atria New York City Computers Blog
Atria means computers in New York
Which Payment Gateway to Use for Your E-commerce Website?
February 21st, 2010 by admin
This is a common question I get asked a lot: which payment gateway to use for my website? And the answer really depends on your business. If you don’t already have a merchant account, your choices are limited to the likes of PayPal and Google Checkout and other gateways that don’t require you have a merchant account.If you have a merchant account, then you have a much wider choice of what payment gateway to choose.
It’s advisable to let the customer take the payments ON the payment gateway’s server and not use something like PayPal Payments Pro which let’s you take payments on your site (sending the information securely via https to PayPal). Why would that be not advisable? Well, people are getting wary of phishing techniques now and the trend is that people feel safer when they’re actually on a recognised payment gateway’s server (by looking closely at the URL they are at) and putting in their credit card details there. This is a fairly contentious issue as some people believe taking payments on your site gives a professional touch to your website, however.Bear in mind it’s good to give your website visitors a choice of how to pay. Some people like to pay via PayPal because they’re a PayPal member. Another person may hate PayPal because they had a bad experience with them. You could win both customers by offering them the chance to checkout their items with PayPal or Google Checkout – that way you let the customer decide how they want to pay.