If you are in business on-line you need a payments gateway and there seem to be a never ending supply of them now. Just no real directory for them and as with any product there are suppliers and resellers and integrators and franchises and .. I guess that you get the picture. Naturally there are good and bad flavors of each too and the only way that you’ll know is by trying them out. Just because they are listed on this page does NOT mean that I endorse them.

DISCLAIMER: this information does not constitute advice to you or any other person, no one is responsible for your disaster except you. I guarantee YOU WILL GET HURT and that is no-body’s fault except your own for trading on line.

So how do you begin? Well you begin by defining your business needs and parameters. Don’t guess, you’ll just get yourself into a world of financial hurt. If you don’t know then start off small, in general, but not always, smaller mistakes are less costly. So the things to consider are:

  • Number of customers that you reasonibly expect to make purchases through your site. This will affect which pricing model you use and how robust your site needs to be.
  • Where your customers will be purchasing from. Customers who live and buy from overseas will have specific shipping and billing needs. It is also more difficult to deal with fraud when you send your product to a foriegn country. With local customers in the same country as you you can choose to use localised payments solutions too.
  • Your bank. Often you will find it quite difficult to work with your bank. They’re big, and some times it seems like an overly arduous journey just to get set up with the right type of merchant account and product. You may need to go to a wallet solution to handle your transactions simply to make the whole management thing simple.
  • Risk and fraud. You really, really need to understand how these things work to make sure that your business that was profitable yesterday was not wiped out last night by the effects of the dangers of on-line trade. Research everything that you can about this you really are on your own here it is your business.

Once you have defined your business model and know what your want to do start looking around at your options. I like to broadly catagorise the payment gateways in three categories: bank, wallet and account based. However in all categories, if you have not done this before get help from someone who has done it successfully or professionals who come accredited by the bank or gateway that you choose.

Bank based is normally the more expensive option; it involves geting your existing, or finding a new, bank’s gateway product integrated with your site. Normally this involves setting up a commercial account and providing endless details for the bank to scrutinise and will end up with the most expensive product. Often its quite limiting too. However for merchants of significant size this is really the only way to go. The charges for set up can be quite large, but unlike wallet options the charges per transaction can be negotiated and generally they can be fixed.

Wallet based retailing is generally through a third party like Pago, Paypal or Paymate. The idea is that you open or host a wallet with the third party and your customers pay money into it through whatever card scheme (Visa, Mastercard, etc.) for a price. For the priviledge you normally get billed a tidy little percentage of the transaction value along with whatever other fees that the wallet system owners feel like charging you. You need to be really careful about how suspect transactions are contested. There are normally limits of various sizes (amount, frequency, etc.) applied to wallets.

Account based payment systems are hosted by you and are for your well recognised customers. These are the people that you have had a long term relationship with and can hold a tab open with. Frequent flyers that you have had experience with and trust. The idea is that you maintain your accounts as you would any other person coming into your shop, extend a line of credit and bill them at the end of month. It aviods loads of bank fees, you can use other forms of payment like cheque or on-line bank payment / transfer.

Whatever your model you are going to get hurt. Minimise your risks, expect damage and don’t come crying to anybody else: especially me. I guarantee that you will get hit sooner or later, the Internet is a nasty place.

Now here’s a small list of gateways that you can look at: