Practically, the efficiency of the operation of the eCommerce website might be measured by the amount of support the customers get. The customers are more likely to complete the purchase if the checkout process is quick and flawless and they are more likely to return if they get an enjoyable experience with the online store. At this point, an enjoyable experience consists of the great design and speed of the website and the seamless checkout experience. At this point, there is no surprise that customers are more likely to complete their purchases when the Magento payment gateway they are going to use is well-known for their safety.
What is a Payment Gateway and How Does It Work?
A payment gateway is merely a bridge between your customers and your Magento website. Payment gateways are serving as the middlemen between credit card and debit card orders. The job of the payment gateway is to check the card safely and approve or decline a transaction. When the card is safe and everything is fine, the money are withdrawn from the card and deposited to your amount.
In other words, payment gateways work in the same way as POS terminals do. When you go to the store, you need to use a POS terminal to process your card. In the same way, the payment gateway works for customers in your online store. Interestingly, when you use a payment gateway to accept the payment from your customers and receive it to your account, you are going to pay fewer fees.
How to Evaluate a Payment Gateway?
Obviously, using a payment gateway is a great way to ensure an optimal checkout experience for the customers. However, here comes the question, which payment gateways should be chosen. Ideally, a selected payment gateway is going to perfectly fit the strategic aims of the business. When a payment gateway is properly chosen, it enforces reaching strategic aims to and goals for the business.
Fundamentally, a payment gateway is a great fit when it increases convenience for your customers and decreases the costs for your business. To choose the most appropriate payment gateway, the business should consider the next four factors, namely:
- Protection against payment fraud
- Ease of integration into the existing online store
- Supported payment methods
- Costs to pay monthly or as a fee
Taking into account these four factors you are having more opportunities to choose a proper payment method. In addition, when setting up a payment gateway, consider the two options that Magento provides. They are the community edition and the enterprise edition. More specifically, if you are running a big business, choosing a Magento payment processor that can work with the majority of popular payment processors out of the box.
Top Payment Gateways for Magento 2
When choosing payment gateways for Magento 2, you are going to choose the most popular ones so that the customers feel safe when completing the checkout. Among the most famous payment gateways for Magento 2 are PayPal, Stripe, CartaSi, Braintree, Authorize.net, Square, EBizCharge, 2Checkout, and others.
PayPal
PayPal is simple and famous. Everyone knows what PayPal is and how it works. The ease of integration, quick checkout, and support of international payments are the reasons why more than 7 million online businesses have chosen PayPal as their payment gateway. Other features of PayPal include but are not limited to accepting credit card payments, creating and sending customized invoices, doesn’t require a monthly payment but requires a per-each transaction fee of 2.9% +$0.30. In addition, PayPal is available in 200 counties and it works great for the currency exchange. Therefore, PayPal is great in everything but pretty expensive.
Stripe
Stripe is the main competitor of PayPal based in Australia. However, Stripe works with 100 countries, which is less than PayPal does but much more than other payment processors. Stripe has a competitive advantage of no need to set up distinct merchant facilities. Another competitive advantage of Stripe is that it works on-site, with no redirects to other websites. In addition, Stripe does not take any additional charges for integration and Magento 2 stores are charged only 2.9 percent + 0.30 USD per authorization. Finally, Stripe is easy to set up and ensures a seamless checkout process. Oftentimes, Stripe is the recommendation for global Magento 2 sellers.
CartaSi
CartaSi is the best-known payment processor on the Italian market. It is a payment provider that has already exceeded 2 billion transactions and maintains 13 million cards in circulation. That said, the majority of Italians purchase online products and services using CartaSi on the regular basis. In addition, CartaSi offers a combination of benefits to both store runners and their customers. Thus, the businesses running on the Italian market need to have the CartaSi payment extension that is available to all online stores running on Magento 2.
Braintree
Braintree is the payment processor that offers payment protection on a global level. In addition, Braintree operates in 44 countries and uses 130 currencies, which is good for a global business. Braintree is used to process payments in AirBNB and LivingSocial, and it is pretty famous in a variety of businesses all over the world. A regular rate offered by Braintree is 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction, but it might be chosen individually and might be changed to flat rate and interchange plus. The biggest advantage of Braintree is that its functionality is totally designed to have security as a core feature.
Authorize.net
Authorize.net has been a trusted payment processor since 1996. Authorize.net is a regular payment gateway that is tested with time and experience but it does not support recurrent payments. Moreover, Authorize.net does not save credit card information for the users. That said, it is the best option for a one-time payment. Every time customers make a purchase, they need to enter their details again. Authorize.net offers a free mobile app and around-the-clock support but the standard fee of 2.9% + $0,30 for every transaction and a $25 monthly fee.
Square
Square is a famous payment processor found in Silicon Valley a decade ago. As a result, the payment gateway was used by both in-store and online store payment processing. The biggest benefit of the Square is that it can be easily integrated into Magento 2 store. It is also easy to integrate with POS systems and POS readers. With Square, it is easy to configure the omnichannel payment gateway as soon as it works with almost all debit and credit cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Masterpass, and other financial apps. With Square, it is possible to make recurrent payments and use digital wallets. However, the fee is the same for Square as it is for other payment gateways, namely 2.9% + $0.30.
EBizCharge
EBizCharge is the payment gateway that works equally for B2B and B2C merchants in Magento. The competitive advantage of EBizCharge is proving a full complex of payment platform services, including processing payments, working with merchant accounts, payment integrations, and a collection of tools to adjust payment options for existing payment tools. In addition, with EBizCharge, it is easy to integrate payment processes with accounting apps, CRMs, and ERP. This means that with EBizCharge, you are going to have all the information about financial and management processes at your fingertips, and this information is protected with tokenization & encryption, anti-fraud systems, and a lot of other security features. Pricing of the EBizCharge is customized and individual in each case.
2Checkout
2Checkout is used to simplify the checkout process for customers. The system is made to ensure the safety and security of checkout and has more than 300 anti-fraud rules that are recognized under multiple standards. The cost of 2Checkout is different for different locations of the business.
Conclusion
While the idea of all payment gateways and payment processors is to simplify the checkout process, there are a lot of differences between the processors. Yet the decision for which to choose should be individual. If you are hesitating and choosing among several or between the two, don’t hesitate to contact us for a consult. The advice of the professional team of SOFTLOFT company is probably going to be the move that saves your company a lot of money for future growth.
