How an eCommerce Store’s Payment Providers Impact Its Value

When it comes to establishing an eCommerce business, your order fulfillment process is one of the most critical cornerstones of success. And the lynchpin of that fulfillment process is your payment portal. While inventory management, a solid return policy, and efficient delivery are certainly important, they’re all functionally irrelevant if your customers can’t pay. 

It’s also worth noting that, per online conversion expert Salecycle, the majority of the reasons for shopping cart abandonment are directly tied to the payment process, with shoppers abandoning their purchase for reasons that included: 

• Being forced to create an account (34 percent) 
• A checkout process that’s too long or complex (26 percent) 
• The site seemed untrustworthy (17 percent) 
• The website crashed or encountered an error (17 percent) 
• A lack of payment options (6 percent). 

In short, it’s in your best interest to make checking out as intuitive and streamlined as you possibly can. The more steps a customer has to go through in order to purchase something from you, the higher the chances that they’ll abandon their purchase. And the more customers you lose to shopping cart abandonment, the more revenue you lose.

And lower revenue naturally means that if you want to eventually sell your eCommerce business, people are going to pay less for it.

It isn’t just that one metric that’s impacted by a poorly designed or implemented payment process. Experienced buyers can and will examine your website’s payment portal before they commit to a purchase. And while that’s not necessarily something we can assign a concrete metric to, it can impact their willingness to pay a certain price — or even purchase your business at all — for a number of reasons.

• They will need to dedicate time and effort post-purchase to optimize the portal and fix any usability issues. 
• If the portal isn’t properly secured, there’s a higher chance that data may have been compromised, and they’ll have to deal with the fallout. This could mean litigation and regulatory fines in the near future, neither of which make for an attractive purchase. 
• They’ll need to deal with the process of finding and implementing additional payment options. 
• They may need to discard your original portal altogether and replace it with something more functional. 

It follows, then, that a well-optimized payment portal will be a selling point in the same way that a poorly-designed one is a sticking point. As for what this involves? A few things. 

What Are Payment Gateways? 

Where eCommerce transactions are confirmed, there are two specific “flavors” of the payment system: payment gateways and payment processors. Although the two terms are often used interchangeably, they’re very distinct from one another. Where the confusion comes into play is that they actually function as components of the same process, which generally consists of the following: 

• Your payment system. Self-explanatory. These are connected directly to your merchant account.
• The customer’s payment account. This could be a credit card, a bank account, or a service such as Paypal. 
• A payment processor. This connects your payment system to the customer’s payment account and facilitates the transfer of funds. Generally, a payment processor requires either a physical point of sale system or a payment gateway. 
• A payment gateway. This adds secure authorization to the payment process, while also effectively serving the same function as a card scanner or terminal at a brick and mortar store. Note that some services, such as Square, offer a virtual terminal as an alternative to a payment gateway.

Choosing The Right Payment Gateway

Generally speaking, a good payment gateway will meet the following requirements: 

• PCI-compliant security. This is critical if you’re going to be accepting payment cards, although arguably important no matter what kind of payment options you plan to enable. You may also want to explore fraud protection and buyer/seller authentication.  Please know: SSL encryption is a must for your entire checkout process. Make sure you position a trust badge on each page of your website, to signify to customers that their data is protected. 
• Usability. In addition to being both intuitive and streamlined, a good payment gateway will allow your customers to choose from multiple different payment types. 
• Connectivity. Ideally, you’ll want a payment gateway that’s both self-hosted (meaning customers don’t have to leave your site to use it) and easy to implement. 

Beyond that, it’s more a matter of what you’re specifically looking for. Most of the top payment gateways and platforms meet all of the above requirements, after all. Ask yourself: 

• How important is customizability? 
• How much money am I willing to spend on fees/pricing? 
• What is my current level of development expertise? 
• Do I need analytics baked in? 
• What markets and currencies am I typically going to work with? 
• What are the preferred methods of payment for my audience? 

Choosing The Right eCommerce Payment Gateway

At a minimum, I’d suggest considering PayPal. It’s one of the world’s largest payment processors, which means it’s considerably likelier that your customers use it — and that there’s a high chance they’ll be frustrated if they can’t. Beyond that, you might consider looking at a few other merchants operating in your specific sector. These include:

Authorize.net. This platform allows customers to make payments in person, online, on your mobile device, and even over the phone. 

Stripe. Stripe is a multi-use platform that allows payment processing as well as spend management, card creation, invoice billing and processing, and more. 

Square. Square allows businesses to accept orders online, over the phone, or through email, and let customers find them through a delivery hub. It also offers auto-billing, stored information, and powerful reporting tools.

Braintree Payments. This service processes credit cards, PayPal, and wallets like Venmo, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. Tools also help users manage data security and streamline their financial operations.  

Examine what payment options each one offers, and what payment providers they work with. Given that you’re likely serving the same audience, it follows that your payment processes would be similar, as well. 

Pay It Forward

The order fulfillment process is one of the most important components of a successful eCommerce business. And checkout is the foundation of that process. By choosing the right providers and gateways, offering multiple payment options, and making sure each step of the process is as streamlined as possible, you can make things significantly easier on your customers.

And in so doing, you can improve the overall value of your business a great deal.