For ecommerce business owners like you, setting up your systems to accept credit cards and other forms of payment is essential. Although accepting plastic is not new, changes are continuing to ripple throughout the payments environment as health and safety, work-related, and economic conditions evolve. Understanding the current climate gives you the best possible chance to set your website and business up to excel in 2022 and beyond.

Review your options.

Given the skyrocketing popularity of ecommerce, it should come as no surprise that competition among the payment processing companies that facilitate them is fierce. Therefore, it is in your best interests to devote time and care to choose the one that best meets your unique needs. Try to find a vendor that offers a payment gateway, merchant services, and website-building capabilities, and remember that some will even allow you to send email invoices. At this point, your best bet is to assess who your customers are and what is important to them so that you can provide them with the best possible purchasing and customer experience.

If you still aren’t sure which option to choose, it may help to ask the following questions.

• How do you want to accept payments? (Options include a “buy” button on your site, building a new ecommerce site or webpage, sending invoices to customers, or using a virtual terminal.)
• What is your projected sales volume? Do you expect it to remain stable, or do you think there is a realistic chance that your business will grow in the upcoming year?
• What payment options would your customer base prefer?

The better you understand your business, your goals, and the needs and priorities of the customers you serve, the more likely it will be that your choice of an online payment processor will be the right one for you.

Set up your payment processing vehicle.

If you want to accept online credit card payments, you will need the following.

• A website or ecommerce platform where customers can learn about your goods and services and choose what they want to buy.
• A secure payment gateway where the customer’s card payment is accepted, encrypted, and passed onto the other players in the payment process.
• A merchant account where the funds from your online payments are eventually deposited.

Constructing and maintaining a website is the way that most business owners choose to accept online payments and collect customer data that they can use for future marketing campaigns. Depending on the platform and hosting service you use, you will have a variety of available payment options. At Inovio, we offer BigCommerce merchants direct integration to our Electronic Payment Exchange platform for in-depth reporting, Virtual Terminal transactions, and more.  

Give your customers maximum ease and flexibility in the payments process.

Today’s online marketplace is brimming with competitors vying for your customers’ money. If your website is cluttered or confusing, or if you fail to offer the payment options your potential buyers can enjoy elsewhere, you will likely lose out to one of your cyber rivals. Fortunately, you can take actionable steps to reduce instances of shopping cart abandonment.

One of the most effective ways is to make the checkout process as fast, seamless, and secure as possible. This can be done by allowing your customers to pay with one click using options like Apple Pay and Samsung Pay. 

Additionally, buyers appreciate flexibility when it comes to how they pay. Offering buy now, pay later and interest-free installments plans incentivizes shoppers who may be on the tipping point of making a purchase while simultaneously encouraging them to feel positive about your business and your relationship with them.

Make your site secure.

Protecting your customers’ personal details and payment data is not just a suggestion or an item at the top of a “best practices” list; it is required by the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). These guidelines are enforced by the PCI DSS Council, and failure to abide by them could lead to serious financial and reputational consequences for your business.

PCI compliance is especially important for ecommerce companies since they are more susceptible to fraud. This is because you are unable to physically inspect the customer’s credit card. As a result, numerous fraud prevention strategies and technologies have been developed to lower ecommerce companies’ risk. Therefore, choose a merchant service provider that offers built-in chargeback and fraud protection. Also, consider using third-party software that features address verification services (AVS) and 3-D Secure payments to add an extra layer of authentication.

Continually work to keep payment processing costs down.

While you will always need to pay fees for the privilege of accepting your customers’ electronic payments, there are ways to keep them to a minimum. As long as you aren’t in a binding contract, you can renegotiate some of the charges you incur once you begin to steadily process more than $15,000 or $20,000 in transactions each month.

Additionally, you may want to look into processing echecks, also known as ACH payments. To do this, your customer provides their bank account details, and you agree on a withdrawal date or amount. In some cases such as subscriptions, memberships, or the purchase of big-ticket items, ACH transactions may happen on a recurring basis. Fees are typically much lower for ACH payments.

If there is one thing consumers and business owners have learned in recent years, it is that the economy and payments landscape are in a state of flux. Running a growing ecommerce business demands that you keep your finger on the pulse of the most recent consumer behaviors and payment processing trends. By doing so, you have an excellent chance of surpassing your rivals and succeeding in providing stellar goods and services at a handsome profit.