Features of Payment Gateways

The decision to
accept credit card
payments and so increase revenue to your online business brings with it
the difficulty in choosing a payment gateway to process sales.  

In
very simple
terms, the gateway processes online payments by connecting your websites order
form with the merchant account and returning the answer to the merchant and
customer, either approved or declined.
Although the gateway
itself actually only
connects the website to
the merchant account,
larger payment gateway providers offer additional services, such as merchant
accounts and shopping carts.

All
payment gateways have standard fees to be aware of. The first of these
are setup fees, charged when the gateway is initially established and often
non-returnable. There will also be monthly fees to pay for the service and
charges for every transaction processed, regardless of whether the transaction
has been accepted or denied. Nowadays, when searching the internet we want
everything to be processed quickly and get annoyed if this isn’t the case. If
transactions are slow when purchasing or during check out, the customer is
likely to leave your website and find another that can process the sale much
quicker. You need a reliable gateway provider who can promise a quick efficient
service.
Gateways offer a range of features that will increase security and revenue.
Listed below are several
of the more common features to expect.

The most important feature are
fraud prevention tools.
Merchants continually neglect this part of their business; fraudulent
transactions result in loss of revenue, something no merchant wants or needs.
Merchants will be aware of chargebacks and the penalties these can incur; credit
card fraud is prevalent, increasing daily as hackers come up with advanced
methods to obtain card information. Utilising anti-fraud tools will mean less
time inspecting suspect transactions and more time generating sales. Basic
anti-fraud tools include an Address Verification System (AVS) that
checks the customers’ delivery address against the address the card issuing bank
has on file, and CVV2, the 3 digit security number printed on the back of credit
cards VISA, MasterCard and Discover Card.

Another addition to expect is a
recurring billing system,
particularly suitable for subscription and membership based businesses. Many
merchants have customers that order products on a regular basis, if billing has
to be done each month to the same customer using the same details it can waste
valuable time and energy. With recurring billing you just supply the gateway
with the customers billing information and how regularly to invoice them (this
only needs doing once) and the gateway conducts all future transactions.

Some customers will actually prefer to call
rather than send an
email and wait for a reply, especially if it is a quick query or regarding a
refund. Once the query has been dealt with and the customer now wants to make a
purchase it would be inconvenient for them to return to the website, they might
decide not to bother and so you lose the sale. A virtual terminal means the
merchant can take a sale over the phone by processing the customer's credit card
payment manually.
Virtual
terminals are also used to issue returns and cancel unwanted
transactions.

Credit cards have become the most common and convenient way to pay online but
there are still people who don’t own one; you don’t want to turn these people
away and lose a sale. Whereas written cheques used to be the norm, there are now
electronic checks (eChecks) available. No need to write out a cheque, post it,
wait for it to arrive and clear, customers can merely enter their bank details
by electronic means.

The main headache for online merchants is security. Along with your business
information, your customers' personal information moves through your gateway
every day. This information is invaluable to hackers;
when choosing a gateway
ensure you select one that uses the highest security techniques to keep
information safe. These should include security schemes operated by the main
credit card providers, such as the Visa Cardholder Information Security Program,
MasterCard Site Data Protection, and Discover Information Security and
Compliance. If your
gateway
provider doesn’t comply with these you could end up paying higher fees
or your account closed down. Check out the Internet for a
quality payment gateway
provider that offers a high level of anti-fraud tools to protect you and
your customers.