An efficient payments solution can keep customers coming back for more, with the knowledge that your store can offer a quick and painless checkout process. An inefficient solution, meanwhile, can drive customers away and towards your competitors.
Choosing the right payments providers for your business depends on many factors, but none more than the e-commerce plugins a provider supports. Keep this in mind as we discuss what you should consider when selecting a payments plugin for your business.
Factors to consider when researching e-commerce payments providers
It’s essential to search for a payments solution that can meet your current transactional needs while also supporting long-term growth. Careful evaluation of the following factors can help you narrow down the vast pool of providers and find the payments partner best suited to your business:
- Compatibility with your e-commerce platform
Baseline compatibility between your e-commerce platform and your payments partner is a must. Without it, you cannot set up a smooth and intuitive payments process for your storefront, and you’ll likely lack the necessary support from both providers to take advantage of each platform’s features.
If you have already built an e-commerce storefront, you’ll need to find a payments partner that offers integration support for your specific e-commerce platform provider (i.e. WooCommerce, OpenCart, etc.). Alternatively, if you have yet to set up your storefront or are considering switching to a new provider, you can choose your payments partner first and then select an e-commerce platform, ideally from that partner’s list of supported providers.
- Payment method diversity and support
Payment methods have diversified over recent years due to the rise in popularity of e-commerce.
While in-store payments can still be limited to a few options, most online merchants offer customers the possibility to pay according to their preferences. These preferences have increasingly leaned toward alternative payment methods like digital wallets and Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) services, as well as local payment methods used only within specific regions.
When it comes to choosing your payments provider, the more payment method diversity, the better. You want the operational flexibility to expand into new markets easily, which requires you to have broad access to different global and local payment methods to enable as needed.
- Checkout experience
How easily can your customers checkout when they are ready to pay for goods or services?
Is the checkout process intuitive and native to your e-commerce storefront, or does it redirect the customer away from your main store webpage?
It’s imperative to ask and answer these questions when researching different payments providers.
Centre your provider selection process around the quality of the customer experiences offered. You want a solution that can not only give customers access to their preferred payment methods but also provide a seamless checkout experience across all channels, whether in-person, online, or in-app.
Additionally, you should look for a payments partner that offers checkout customisation options to match your payments page to your business branding. A well-designed, branded checkout can increase customer trust and confidence in your business.
- Scalability
As your business grows, it’s vital to have a payments partner that can grow with you.
The scalability of a payments platform depends on its infrastructure.
Payments platforms built natively on the cloud inherently have greater flexibility, making it easier to handle sudden spikes in payment volumes and diverse transactions in different currencies.
Cloud-native payments platforms also provide a higher degree of customisation through their integration capabilities. These platforms offer simple connections to APIs and digital payment methods, allowing you to build payments experiences that meet the exact specifications of your business and customer needs.
Tips for shortlisting plugins and payments providers for your business
Struggling to make a final decision about which e-commerce plugins and payments providers to choose for your business? Uncomplicating the selection process is all about knowing how to compare different plugins and providers to find the features you want and need most.
Along with the factors discussed above, you also need to consider the unique needs of your business and customers to make an informed decision. Question yourself and your team thoroughly on topics like what payment methods are in the highest demand in your target regions and what types of currencies you need to support in your payments process.
Armed with this information, you can use these tips to make your final choice:
- Prioritise customer support
If you’re choosing to outsource your payments infrastructure to a platform provider, you need to be sure that the provider is on standby and ready to assist you with any payments issues that arise.
Payment failures and delays can have a sometimes severe negative impact on your revenue and customer retention. When things go wrong with a transaction, your payments platform should provide you with a dedicated support team to help you troubleshoot and resolve the problem quickly.
Likewise, you want a platform support team that can assist you with the plugin and integration process as well. Exceptional support helps you get your e-commerce store off the ground quickly and securely.
- Don’t forget about compliance and risk management
Few industries are at as great a risk of fraud as the payments industry.
The payments provider you choose must adhere to all of the latest regulations, including the regional-specific rules and laws in the locations where your business operates, such as PSD2 or PCI DSS.
Look for providers who offer the latest risk management protections and anti-fraud technologies. You want a provider that takes full advantage of advanced fraud tools, such as machine learning, and consistently updates its approach according to new fraud trends.
- Take advantage of demos and trials
What’s better than hands-on experience?
A payments provider that can offer you a demo or trial of their platform can let you see firsthand how well that platform could handle your specific business payments needs.
Using a demo or trial gives you the opportunity to simulate real-world transactions and evaluate the user experience throughout the process. You can look at a payment from the perspectives of both the business and the customer, ensuring that both sides of a transaction are tailored for success.
This goes for e-commerce platforms as well. When narrowing down your selection process of either an e-commerce or a payments platform, a demo can give you the insight you need to determine which providers will fit best in your existing payments or technological workflows.
Which e-commerce plugins should you enable on your payments platform?
When choosing a payments provider to integrate with your e-commerce platform, it’s important to look beyond the recommended providers promoted on your platform’s plugin page.
If you’re starting from the payments platform itself, then the choice comes down not to choosing a payments provider but to selecting an e-commerce platform from which to build your storefront.
For example, payabl.’s platform offers connections to many popular e-commerce plugins, such as:
- WooCommerce: Through the WooCommerce plugin, you can enable payments features such as deposits, refunds, subscriptions, chargebacks, BNPLs, and save cards.
- PrestaShop: The payabl. PrestaShop plugin provides access to a diverse mix of payments capabilities and methods, including Open Banking and local payments, like Giropay.
- OpenCart: The OpenCart plugin on payabl. makes it easy to streamline e-commerce payments processes with features like deposits, refunds, chargebacks, a wide selection of payment methods.
- Wix: Wix is a leading website builder with intuitive features. You can integrate payabl. through our Wix plugin, adding critical support for credit card payments to your Wix storefront.
- Magento: Adobe’s Magento can support multiple payments features and methods, including credit cards, alternative payment methods, refunds, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and PayPal.
Enjoy endless payments possibilities with payabl.
At payabl., our payments platform offers widespread support for numerous e-commerce plugins and tools. With our products and solutions, you can build payments and checkout experiences that match the demands of your customers without compromising your revenue. Get in touch to discuss which plug in works best for your needs.