by Dave Bapsnill
So, you are a small business owner or freelancer looking to expand your business and make some more money. You come up with the idea of supplementing your income by selling your products or services online. So you have setup your website and added your services and products. Now you are looking for a method for your customers to pay you.
There are a wide variety of options available to the company owner when it comes to getting paid online. Usual methods like wire transfer, cheque, cash and direct bank deposit are great core payment methods for any business, but because there are so many great online payment gateways out there it is probably a good idea to offer at least one for you customers to utilize.
Geographic location of your clients
First on the agenda is identifying what type of clients your business has. Are most of your customers based in your own region or country or do the most of your sales come from clients that are outside of your country or close geographic region.
It is also important to ask yourself what currency your clients will be paying you in. Most payment gateways have support for specific currencies only. So always pick one that supports the currencies your clients will want to pay in.
Payment scheduling type
Do you sell a product or service that the customer needs to make one payment for or is the product or service paid for in installments? i.e. comes as part of a recurring subscription that requires multiple successive payments.
If your clients need to make once off payments you can look at services that provide the customer with the ability to make an instant, secure credit card payment. You can also look at an online payment facilitator, like PayPal, that allows instant payment via an account that can be topped up via credit card, bank account or wire transfer.
Let’s say that the majority of your customers will need to pay on a recurring basis for the products or services you provide. For example; a fortnightly payment for the house maintenance services your business supplies. This means you will need to look at a payment gateway that allows the collection of recurring direct debits to credit cards and bank accounts. Make sure you use a service that supports collection in the currency your clients use.
Overall service and fees
So you have decided on a handful of gateways that meet your currency, target market and payment type needs. To assist you make your final decision you can use the tips below:
- Online transactions cost money, to save as much as you can shop around for the gateway that charges you the least in transaction fees. Saving few cents on each transaction can save you thousands over time.
- Remember that you will need to reconcile payment made via your payment gateway. It is therefore important to ensure that the gateway you choose provides adequate and accurate reporting.
- Merchant account: Do you possess a merchant account at a bank? If not, some gateways act as your merchant account. Find out what kind of bank accounts you will require to extract funds from or use a specific payment gateway before signing up.
- Safety and security regulations in the payment gateway sector are there to protect you. Always follow up with you local regulatory authority to make sure the payment gateway you want to use is a member and complies with their rules.
About the Author:
Bill Bapsnill has been in the online billing industry for many decades. He suggests that you do your
recurring billing via direct
debit order.