Payment Gateway Comparisons 2023: Everything You Should Know

The modern world is a global village. We connect in real-time with people thousands of square kilometers away. The connection transcends communication, and you can now sell or buy products and services online via e-commerce sites.

Reading through this payment gateway comparison will make you know the best transaction options for your business and improve customer experience.

Understanding Payment Gateways

The primary role of a payment gateway is to give merchants speedy and secure access to digital payments while ensuring customer data and money is protected. It’s an ideal service provider for online payments that support global transactions of several currencies and crypto.

The process should be simple. After a customer places an order, the payment gateway verifies the card details to confirm if there are funds in the user account to pay for the service or items provided. 

How to Choose the Best Payment Gateway for Your Business

It’s important to earn the confidence of your customers by providing viable payment solutions. It’s not easy considering that there are numerous payment gateway options. Merchants often struggle to match the ideal platform with the nature of the services and goods they provide.

To make the process less tedious, you should consider the following aspects:

• Recurring billing
• Markups
• Fees
• Features
• Customer support.
• User data security

What are the Various Types of Business Payment Gateways?

There isn’t one payment gateway suitable for all businesses as this varies with each business model. Gateway payments offer varied controls and user experiences.

1.     Hosted Payment Gateway

By choosing this method, the customer gets redirected from your site to the gateway payment service providers. You will find a form to fill in the information required to facilitate the transaction. Once complete, you are rerouted to the merchant website to finish the checkout.

Advantages

• The transactions are secure and PCI-compliant through the fraud protection system.
• Easy for merchants to install and simple for users to understand and navigate through.
• Customizable.

Disadvantages

• The external payment gateway limits the merchant’s control of the user purchase experience.

2.     Self-hosted Payment Gateways

Here the payment happens within the merchant’s e-commerce site, and it gathers user payment information. Some gateways need a hidden key while others use a predetermined payment data format.

Advantages

• Excellent user experience as the entire transaction is completed without being rerouted to another site.
• The merchant can monitor the payment process and customize it accordingly to improve user experience.

 Disadvantages

• Lack of a technical support system. If the system fails can be expensive to fix and might require an expert.

3.     API Hosted Payment Gateways

The Application Programming Interface (API) allows users to enter their debit or credit card information onto the merchant’s e-commerce site. The payment process can also include HTTPS queries.

Advantages

• The merchant monitors the process and can customize the user interface to improve customer experience.
• It integrates with laptops and mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. 
• Integrative capable – can be used for mobile devices, laptops, etc.

Disadvantages

• It’s secure to the customers because merchants have to comply with the strict DSS PCI and SSL certification requirements.

4.     Local Bank Integration Gateways

The customer is rerouted to the bank’s payment gateway, where they can fill in their payment and contact details. After the payment is complete, the customer is redirected back to the merchant’s website checkout page.

Advantages

• Installation is easy and fast. It’s ideal for start-up businesses that require a one-time payment system.

Disadvantages

• It has limited features that restrict repeat payments or returns.

4 Top Payment Gateway Providers for Your Business

If you are struggling to decide on the best payment gateway for your online business, here are three options to narrow down the selection. 

PayPal: The Best for Convenience and Speed

PayPal offer a global online payment solutions over the last two decades. The number of users keeps increasing annually, and it now has over 330+ active users making it a giant platform among its competitors.

Anyone can set up a PayPal gateway payment system for their business depending on the regulations of their country. PayPal is accepted in many countries making it an appealing and trustworthy option for companies to win customer confidence.

If you choose PayPal as your payment gateway, you will have two options.

Standard PayPal: Requires no monthly fee. But there is a fixed charge for every transaction.

PayPal Pro: It has a fixed charge for each transaction but requires a monthly fee to maintain your account.

Pros

• Its the best for customers who order and pay using apps via mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.
• Its a trusted brand that inspires customer confidence.
• Merchants are protected under the Seller’s Protection Program ideal for merchants dealing with highly-valuable products.

Cons

• It comes with hidden fees for chargebacks and refunds.

Stripe—Best for International Sales Management

Stripe is a 2010 creation and iinvestments from the co-creators of PayPal. It keeps on evolving and is among the best options for payment gateways that can compete with PayPal’s superior influence.

There are many differences between Stripe and PayPal. While PayPal is an out-of-the-box option, Stripe is a package that processes payments in a customizable manner.

Impressive features include one-click checkouts and subscription-based payments. The main advantage of Stripe over PayPal is that it attracts reduced fees per transaction.

But Stripe isn’t easy to master. Merchants require at least some basic understanding of web development skills and languages like Python or Java.

Pros

• There are no monthly fees.
• They have a fixed transaction fee but offer reduced rates to merchants from US, Canada, and Europe.
• It supports over 135 currencies and accepts many payment methods.
• Merchants can design tailored checkout form.
• It can facilitate direct transactions for dropshipping firms between your customers and third-party businesses.

Cons

• It can take up to seven days to settle payments. Not suitable for businesses that don’t have a sturdy cash flow.
• Card payments that vary from your currency attract a conversion fee percentage over the standard transaction fee.

Amazon Pay—Best Innovation

Amazon has over 350 million active users who keep increasing because of the easy checkout process experience. If you have an Amazon account, the details keep recycling for all transactions cutting down on the purchasing process time.

It’s an intentional feature that makes customers complete the checkout process before they can opt out from purchasing your products or services. Merchants can sign up for Amazon Pay online on the Amazon website. It will allow them to list Amazon products from the Amazon marketplace on their e-commerce websites.

The Amazon payment gateway benefits merchants that integrate Amazon Pay with their e-commerce sites because customers don’t have to leave the page when making transactions.

The downside is that Amazon doesn’t allow using PayPal to make payments. But customers with PayPal cash cards can complete transactions.

Pros

• You can integrate Amazon Pay with 200+ e-commerce sites like Wix and Shopify.
• Customer details get auto filled making the checkout process fast
• It supports voice transactions 

Cons

• Users must have an Amazon account to complete transactions
• The lack of PayPal support might discourage sales opportunities

WePay—Best free International Money Transfer.

WePay started in 2008, and it was a company aiming to correct PayPal’s vulnerabilities. Everything you can do with PayPal, you can also achieve with WePay. The API is better and makes it easy for sellers to integrate it with their e-commerce websites.

WePay also offers a secure transaction process to include a risk protection system. Unfortunately, WePay isn’t an ideal platform if your business handles huge transactions making it suitable only for start-up and small enterprises.

WePay doesn’t have a monthly or annual fee, and you can easily set it up. And like PayPal, it has a fixed charge for every transaction you make.

Pros

• You don’t need a merchant account. Its provided within WePay’s business system.
• WePay is a secure platform because it uses algorithms, machine learning,  data protection tools, and complies with all required financial safety standards.
• Customizable. WePay offers personalized payment services suitable for your business model. You can quote-base the fees depending on your site’s complexity level.

Cons

• Integrating WePay as your payment gateway might require some API developer knowledge. If systems fail, you will have to incur costs for hiring a specialist, and are usually costly.
• Users complain of a lack of customer support.
• There are numerous reports of frozen accounts and transaction holds for no reason. Users also complain that WePay hold funds over days compared to other gateway payments that take only hours.

Conclusion

Owning an online store requires offering your customers multiple digital payment options. Customers can abandon carts if they fail to find a payment gateway provider that they are accustomed to. You can find many payment gateway comparisons and pick the best service provider tailored to your business needs to improve user experience.

Most gateway payment providers accept international transactions and support several currencies including crypto worldwide.