Have you ever thought of getting a backup payment processing gateway? But what is it and how can you benefit from it?
What are payment processing gateways?
Payment gateways allow you to accept credit card payments online or in person by way of transferring money between a payment processor and your merchant account via a credit card processor or terminal.
However, payment gateway providers may not be so transparent about the prices of credit card machines. Thus, there might be different fees associated with each payment without any clear reason why such fees are applied to a particular transaction.
Payment gateways allow businesses to accept credit card payments online to keep it running, as well as transmit payment information. But amid the popularity of online shopping, there are also instances of both malicious and friendly payment fraud.
This type of technology is advantageous because of its capacity to screen fraudulent transactions. Payment gateways return approved or declined messages to the merchant.
Advantages of using a payment gateway include the following:
- Card present transactions at point-of-sale system
- Contactless payment
- Integrated payments
Why you need a second payment gateway?
Relying on one payment partner can be tricky. You can just imagine the downtimes and outages that go with this type of payment processing gateway. And every downtime incurs losses, both reputational and financial.
Therefore, the use of multiple payment gateways will help you avoid this to ensure continuity of your operations. This will mitigate the risk of outages and downtimes and at the same time to provide your customers the best possible experience to pay you.
This will also allow you to offer support for different payment methods, as it enables customers to pay based on their preferred currency.
Benefits of having more than one payment gateway
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It provides better customer experience
Offering support for payment methods and preferred currencies will make the payment process frictionless and streamlined.
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Increased conversion
Having multiple payment gateways will boost your approval rates. Furthermore, you will be able to reroute the transaction to another vendor in the event of glitches on the provider’s side in an instant. This versatility and flexibility will eventually save your sales.
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Facilitated expansion
Aside from the global payment method, you can also offer local options. Having multiple payment gateways will ensure the best coverage, stability, and fees.
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Optimized payment flows
You can minimize declines and make sure transactions are processed optimally.
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Comprehensive functionality
Having more payment partners can give you the opportunity to cover specific business needs as different vendors provides different conditions and supporting features.
Drawbacks of using multiple payment gateways
Of course, aside from the benefits, there are also drawbacks when using multiple payment gateways, which include the following.
- Cumbersome management
- Disparate data sources
- Effort- and time-consuming reconciliation
- Integration hassles
- Maintenance issues
You can avoid pitfalls by integrating multiple payment gateways into your merchant account to avoid most of the common drawbacks mentioned here.
Find a reliable merchant service provider to help you set up a payment gateway, merchant account, processing features, and excellent support particularly when facing issues in the new normal.
