Could a payment gateway help you?

Why not give your customers an even quicker and easier way to pay you?

How does your business receive payments from customers? I would guess that you rely heavily on payments by cheque? Great, but not so great when most businesses are closed, and people are working from home. Keeping that cash flowing steady into your account is essential at all times, now more than ever.

So, here’s a solution that you may not have thought about. Providing the facility for your customers to pay you online, on your website. To some of you this may sound too complex and costly, but it’s surprisingly simple to get in place. Its not overly expensive to do. Let’s have a closer look at this solution to see if its right for you…

Introducing the Payment Gateway

If you shop online, you’ve already used a Payment Gateway. In brief, the website you shop with doesn’t process your credit card details, it has to use a payment gateway provider, such as PayPal, for example. Often the case, the website is integrated with a third-party payment gateway provider to ensure a seamless shopping experience.

Aren’t they just for online shops?

You don’t have to be selling products on your website to have a payment gateway. You can have a simple facility built into your website where someone just enters their details, invoice number and card information. The payment is then processed by the gateway provider, just the same as it does for online stores.

Is it safe to have on my website?

All websites that take payments have to be PCI compliant (Payment Card Industry compliant). That’s why they have to use an authorized payment gateway provider. No credit card details are ever stored on your website.

How much do they charge?

Payment gateway providers offer a range of different schemes. It depends mostly on the volume of payments you expect to take through your website.

From our own experience at Globalgraphics, where over 90% of payments from clients are made on our website, PayPal has proven to be the most cost-effective payment gateway provider. Cost-wise you are looking at a standard fee of around 3 – 4% for each transaction.

How quick do I receive the money in my bank?

For example, with PayPal you’ll receive an email letting you know the details of each payment made on your website. You’ll then need to login to your PayPal account and use a simple transfer procedure to move the money over to your account. You can choose immediate transfer for a small fee, or a standard transfer for free. From our own experience the latter takes 2 days or less.

Can I manually enter card payments?

Yes. If someone calls you up to pay an invoice, you can enter their details and card information directly into the payment gateway of your website. Once processed successfully, they will receive a receipt of their payment directly from the payment gateway provider.

How do I get one on my website?

To give you an idea of cost and timeline, we can build a PayPal payment gateway into your current website within 2 days, from $600 plus HST. You would of course need to set-up a PayPal account which would take you about 15 minutes.

Sounds interesting? Just give us a call at Globalgraphics on 416 256 7800.

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