Roll up! Roll up and join the biggest shopping mall in the world!
Businesses big and small are being urged to jump onto the Internet bandwagon
for unlimited customers ready to shell out for products and services online.
But when it comes to actually processing orders, there's a lot of complexity
involved.
The first problem in this context, is likely to be with the shopping cart.
A customer may desire to use American Express to make a purchase while your
merchant account handles only Visa. This is the reason you should mention the
cards accepted. Then your shopping cart software may not be compatible with
your payment processor.
For fast money transactions, nothing beats having your own credit card processing
software. However the costs, monthly charges and other fees can be impractical
for the smaller businesses.
What are Payment
Gateways?
Take heart because hope comes with payment
gateways. These are super speed online services with huge redundancy
and reliability measures plus backup in one of the most advanced data
centers of today. A seamless process, it doesn't even require your
customer to interact directly with the gateway as data is forwarded
through your shopping cart and a secure SSL connection.
Electronic fund transfer point of sale
terminal or EFTPOS, is an online process of checking validity, encryption
of transaction details, ensuring delivery to correct address and decryption
of responses that is routed back to the shopping cart. Newcomers prefer
to use a payment gateway for processing credit cards. The step-by-step
instructions guide you in making your website credit card enabled.
Essentially, a third party takes care of the entire credit card processing
for you.
Standing at
the Gateway
The payment gateway automatically batches
the transaction or a batch is created by the merchant. Batch refers
to a group of transactions in a specific duration of time, usually
at the end of the day or auto batched at a specified time.
The transaction is then forwarded to the
processor. This is when the credit card bank gets a notification
to charge the account. The money is then kept in the online merchant
account until it is sent to the account-holder's regular bank account
via an electronic funds transfer (EFT).
Selection of a suitable payment gateway or
bridge, is among the most important ecommerce decisions that links
your website to your bank's credit card processor. A wrong choice
can be fatal. Make sure you find out about all options, check to
see if they work together, find out about integration of merchant
account with transaction gateway, processor and shopping cart.
Payment Gateway
Issues
Browse through options, compare rates
and read the fine print to make sure you choose the right one.
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In case you have already bought a shopping cart package,
find out about its compatibility. In case there isn't check
with the vendor about the chances of supporting the payment
gateway services.
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If shopping cart purchase is due, ask the payment gateway
provider for a list of supported applications. Stay away from gateways
with great pricing but limited range of supported shopping carts, which
can cost a lot.
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The gateway must offer Address Verification System (AVS)
protection, which minimizes fraud through the customer's billing address.
The other advantage is the likelihood of reduced fees by your merchant
bank.
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Find out the types of transaction protection being offered,
which may be premium services with charges added to the basic fees. If
your product is youth or technology oriented, it's advisable to pay extra,
to avoid chargeback rates on fraudulent transactions of almost US$ 30
per incident.
The worldwide reach of the Internet is
best utilized to your advantage with a system that enables credit
card payments for supporting international clients as well. Payment
processing services ensures security for customers to give out their
credit card details online.
