Creating an online store is not an easy task. When viewed from the consumer’s perspective, the checkout process seems simple enough: you enter your card details, hit the ‘confirm order’ button and seconds later your order is placed.
From a merchant’s perspective, however, there are many different components that need to be carefully selected and installed onto the site, including payment gateways, merchant acquirers, card schemes, shopping carts, cyber security… the list goes on and on.
Each of these components needs to be correctly configured and aligned so that the payments ecosystem works smoothly. If not, the checkout process may become disjointed or even completely broken, bringing about customer drop-off and lost sales.
Bringing the components of your payment services under one roof
The best way to ensure that the various units of your payments system combine and function well is to choose providers that are able to offer a number of the necessary services for your online store. If this is done, your payment systems (gateway, acquirer etc.) will reconcile well with each other. You will also spare yourself the hassle of having different points of contact for your different payment functions. With an integrated system you can have one contract and one account manager, freeing up time to be better spent elsewhere.
Ensuring 100% functionality
When a merchant chooses a payment gateway and acquiring platform that are not from the same provider, certain features of one may not be compatible with the other. This could involve key features enabling international commerce, such as Dynamic Currency Conversion, or e-wallets such as ApplePay. Choosing different services from different providers creates a disjointed payments ecosystem that could leave the customer feeling frustrated. To ensure this is avoided, merchants should integrate their gateway and acquiring services.
‘Mates rates’
Payments companies will very often offer better rates if merchants decide to integrate several of the available services from the same provider. The existing relationship that merchants have with the payments provider, and proven loyalty in adding extra integrated services, will drive the price of those services down. An integrated payments system creates the best of both worlds for both merchants and providers: merchants benefit from low rates and services that they know and trust; and payment providers benefit from supplying a portfolio of services to merchants.
The complete package
The best payments companies will be able to offer you a number of essential services to create the perfect online store that will drive sales, reduce customer drop-off and keep consumers coming back again and again.
Trust Payments team of experts can guide you through which services your business needs to create a healthy, thriving payments ecosystem for your ecommerce platform. The essential integrated services that Trust Payments can provide are:
- Payment gateway
- Acquiring bank
- Cyber security
- E-wallets
- Shopping carts
- International payments (DCC, multi-currency)
To get in touch and start creating your integrated payments ecosystem, give us a call on 0203 691 2697.
