Offering payment gateway integration is a must for any SaaS platform or business – but not everybody’s clear on why. We can understand that: it’s easy to view payment gateways as little more than a middleman and to think about cutting them out entirely, letting you get closer to your customer.
The payment gateway integration is a secure website transaction system that allows online businesses to collect payments. It is used by anyone who sells products online. Payment gateways transmit credit card, debit card and other payment data directly from your website to a secure credit card processor. The payment gateway is integrated into the shopping cart so that customers don’t have to leave your site to pay.
With payment gateway integration, you can accept a wide range of payment types including credit cards, debit cards, gift cards, PayPal, and checks. Payment gateways are typically free, but some require you to pay a fee for each transaction.
There are several reasons, however, why strong payment gateway integration can be beneficial for your business – both for safety and for strategy. Let’s take a look at why in this article.
Staying Safe
First off, let’s lay it out: with online payments, you can’t see your customer, nor touch the card or see the information they’re providing with your own eyes.
As such, these card-not-present transactions rely wholly on the information that your customer is typing in on to pay. A problem arises, here – you can’t be 100% certain that the information is connected to the customer, or that the information is correct. Fraud risk is astronomically high when it comes to online transactions without strong verification measures in place, and payment gateway integration offers these measures.
Without them, you’re giving potential fraud free reign, meaning that your business has more to deal with and chase, increasing risk. This risk is also increased for your customers, and with fraudsters constantly adapting and finding new ways to beat the system, you could end up losing them to businesses that have strong security measures.
Integrating a payment gateway, however, mitigates this risk. Payment gateways protect your customer data, tokenizing their information and acting as a conduit between merchant and bank to provide quick and easy payment. In addition, payment gateway integration typically offers protection and information about lack of funds, credit or loan history, or closed accounts, giving your business peace of mind that the payments being made are legit.
Growing Business
Good payment integration also offers your platform opportunities to grow and to increase revenue.
In the first instance, this can occur through the very experience you’re offering your customers. Nothing grows business like good word-of-mouth, right? Offering a streamlined, secure payment process for your customers means that they have a good experience with your platform, generating loyalty, referrals, and repeated business.
What’s more, in a world where choice is king, payment gateway integration which offers a multitude of payment options will win you more customers. An example of this is a payment gateway that offers ACH integration, a prized asset in payment. ACH integration is the perfect model for recurring payments and opting for a payment integrator that offers this allows your customers a diversity of options and opens up your business to new markets and clients.
To add to this, payment gateway integration providers can (and should) provide a transaction revenue share. In doing this, what happens is that a brand-new revenue stream is created simply by integration. As your business scales, the revenue share you get from transactions will naturally increase, you’re able to offer better service to your users, diversifying your payment options further and increasing communication with them, and you generate more business – both through retaining your old clients due to their brand loyalty and happiness and in generating new clients. Everyone’s happy and everyone wins.
Finally, payment gateway integration can massively reduce the time your business spends on rebilling or chasing payments. If we consider that credit card decline rates hover at around 10% in recurring subscriptions, reducing that decline rate through assuring payment security via payment integration means you spend less time rebilling, and more time retrieving money from clients that are due to pay, leading to increased income and further growth. I mean, it just makes sense, right?
The Bottom Line
Payment gateway integration may not seem like the most essential thing in the world for your business, but implementing it for your platform brings a host of positives. Not only does it reduce risk, but it can be the difference between seeing your business stall and seeing it fly.
To further discuss payment integration options, contact Agile Payments today. Picking the right payment partner to work with is crucial, and with two decades of experience in payments, Agile Payments are well-placed to help you make the right choice. Get in touch now.
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