What payments should I use on my ecommerce site ?
When selecting your payment processor you have to consider 7 items :
- What is the average unit value of each sale
- What number of transactions per month are you predicting
- What countries are you selling to
- What is you current banking setup
- What is the fraud risk on the product you are selling
- Do I want to or have a merchant credit card account
- What cards am I planning on accepting
- What other methods outside of traditional credit cards
What is the average checkout value of each sale? If it is high value then we recommend using one of rhe well know established payment processors that allow the transaction to take place on your site. It adds to the customer confidence and the higher the checkout total the more smooth it has to run. Think apple store checkout.
Small transaction values under €10 should offer a range of checkout options such as paypal and authorise,net and other processors that do not require you to have a merchant credit card account.
There are 3 types of payment processors.
- Processors who hold a master merchant credit card account and process funds through this to you. Paypal , Stripe and Worldpay are examples.
- Processors who pipe funds through your existing or new Merchant Credit Card Account. Examples Realex, Authipay, Sagepay.
- Processors who do not deal in credit cards like western money union, dwolla, realex fire, social payments like facebook and google wallet. Customers have their credit cards pre-approved and the transaction takes place using the facebook or google login details of the customer.
Fees vary widely, Type 1 processors can charge monthly fees and or a transaction percentage. Type 2 charge monthly fees that allow you x number of transactions per month, the more transactions the lower per transaction the fees are. Type 3 processors charge a flat percentage of the transaction.
So you need to make a small spread sheet with the following fields to help you make your decision.
| Paypal | Worldpay | Realex | Authipay | SagePay | Stripe | GoogleWallet | ApplePay | ||
| transactions per month | |||||||||
| average checkoutvalue | |||||||||
| % of sale | |||||||||
| per transaction fee | |||||||||
| fraud prevention fees | |||||||||
| charge back fees | |||||||||
| merchant credit account required | y | y | y | ||||||
| 100% onsite payment | y | y | y | ||||||
| carding tolerances and fines | |||||||||
| risk of fraud on your product | |||||||||
| will this processor take payments for this product | |||||||||
| countries covered | |||||||||
| speed of remitting funds back to your bank account |