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SECURE PAYMENT GATEWAY – HOW TO SELECT A
GOOD ONE
A merchant account is
like the license to accept credit card
payments from your customers whereas the
payment gateway is the connecting link
between your business account and the
customer’s credit account. Since
financial transactions are performed
through the payment gateway it has to be
secure.
A real – time “Payment
Gateway” provides merchants, a secure
way to accept payments through e –
checks and credit card. A “Payment
Gateway” that is secured permits the
merchant to get the details of the
customer’s checking account or the
credit card and transmit the information
to his processor over the encrypted and
secure SSL connection. If the
transaction is approved then the funds
are transferred from the customer’s
checking account or credit card to the
business account of the merchant.
The best “Payment
Gateway” services will be used by
merchants to process online, mobile and
retail customer sales. If you are a
merchant then you should select a
service provider who will support your
company while it grows. For this reason,
having a payment gateway that supports
more than one sale's environments like
mobile, online and retail will be highly
beneficial. If you have to open a
gateway for each type of processing then
you will be wasting a lot of your hard
earned money.
Since there are several
payment gateway providing companies, you
will have a difficult time to make the
correct choice. Given below is a
checklist that will make your job
easier. In the end, your choice should
meet the requirements of your business
and should increase your business
profits.
The checklist to make the
right choice is:
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Sales reporting in real – time.
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Virtual terminal or batch uploads to
process manual transactions.
-
Virtual POS to process the card –
present transactions.
-
Recurring billing capability to
process subscription and membership
services.
-
An integration method that
integrates your back office s/w with
your payment processing s/w.
-
Online Knowledgebase
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An online help desk
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Technical Support that should be
available all the time
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Balancing of load to process several
merchant accounts with one payment
gateway. This is an important
requirement when your business will
be of significant size.
-
Open Source and Commercial Payment
Modules for shopping carts.
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The company should be PCI compliant
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Should provide “CRM Payment modules”
in the form of commercial and open
source software support.
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Retail Point of Sale Software
support
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AVS or address verification system
-
An online merchant module that is
safe and secure
Some of the add-on or
optional services that should be
available when selected by you are:
-
Processing of electronic checks
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Sophisticated tools for fraud
protection
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Data storage, to store customer
payment information, that is PCI
compliant
-
Software to make mobile payments,
for example through iPhone’s.
Remember that your
customer’s payments are the lifeline for
your company and you are choosing or
authorizing some one to do it for you.
Therefore, be sure that you make the
right choice. |
