Common Payment Gateway Configuration Errors, and How to Fix Them

Collecting money from online customers is now an absolute necessity for most companies, and payment gateways make it possible. They act as a crucial intermediary between your website and the financial systems involved in facilitating the transaction. 

Considering the crucial role they play, it is more important than ever to ensure that your payment gateway is configured properly, avoiding some of the most common pitfalls.

Poor security measures

Skipping key security steps, such as failure to comply with PCI DSS or to use encryption, heightens your risk.

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is a required set of guidelines designed to safeguard cardholder data during storage, transmission, and management. Its goal is to ensure that all entities handling payment information maintain a secure environment. While compliance is mandatory, not all companies uphold these standards diligently. This negligence increases the risk of data breaches and potential legal consequences.

Correcting this oversight requires ongoing vigilance and attention to the current state of the security landscape. Important preventative measures include upgrading and updating systems regularly and hiring professionals to assist with compliance issues when warranted.

Shoddy integration processes

Rushing through integration allows mistakes to remain undetected until they are discovered by customers.

Even with a flexible payment gateway that’s marketed as easy to set up, it's possible to skip key configuration steps in the interest of speed. However, bypassing these steps can compromise security and overall performance. If you bypass writing important documentation or fail to thoroughly test your integration across platforms, you might not recognize an issue during the testing process.

As a result of slipshod initial procedures, your customers might be the first to discover the effects. Issues such as these that can disrupt the flow of someone’s payment can lead to shopping cart abandonment, disaffected clients, and an overall hit to your store’s reputation. 

The good news is that sandbox environments and official support documentation provide the resources needed for a smooth and secure gateway integration. These tools help ensure a thorough and reliable onboarding process.

Insufficient payment options

Only offering minimal ways to pay puts you out of touch with current demand. Provide diverse ways to pay to gain success.

When you give your customers a wide variety of ways to pay, you are more likely to be blessed with extra business. Today’s shoppers expect secure payment options from numerous sources, including credit and debit cards, digital wallets, and automated clearing house (ACH) transfers.

The last thing you want to do is to lose a customer who becomes frustrated that their payment method of choice is unavailable at checkout. Opening up your business to diverse payment options means fewer abandoned shopping carts, happier buyers, higher profits, and additional referrals.

Insufficient mobile optimization

Poor navigability, slow downloads, and unresponsive layouts alienate mobile customers.

Increasingly, customers are interacting with your business exclusively via their smartphone, and that includes making purchases. Failure to optimize your gateway configuration and website to be compatible with mobile devices will rob you of an ever-growing number of these customers.

To maximize your chances of success, make your website mobile-friendly. To that end, feature responsive layouts, fast loading speeds, and ease of navigation.

Currency mismatches

Errors can occur if the currency of a transaction sent from your application does not match that which is configured for your gateway account. Correcting requires adjusting your currency settings.

If you accept international payments, you will want to give customers the ability to pay using their native monetary denomination. To accomplish this, your gateway needs to be configured accordingly. 

For example, there may be a mismatch between the currency of a transaction sent from your application and the one you have configured in your gateway account. If this occurs, the payment will not go through.

To avoid potentially losing a valued international customer, spend time ensuring that your gateway currency settings are properly configured. Test your system to validate that it can accurately accept every type of currency that your international shoppers prefer so that you will make the most of every sale.

Although onboarding your payment gateway might seem overwhelming at first, doing it right is crucial. When it is set up properly, it will promote a seamless, secure buying experience while protecting the integrity of your business.