Best Payment Methods for Your eCommerce Store

The eCommerce industry has grown extraordinarily in the past decade. Since it has advantages like saving time, providing access to better product alternatives, and simplifying the buying process without even leaving your home, millions of people started to choose online shopping over in-store shopping. The merchants are very well aware of this great potential for sales and want to make the most of it. Therefore, the number of online stores is increasing rapidly. But how can you differentiate from thousands of eCommerce businesses and come forward as the forerunner? The best way to do so is to give the best shopping experience for your website visitors. The user experience of your site must be smooth and straightforward.

Check-out is the most essential step of your sales funnels, the whole aim of your business, the conversion, happens at this stage. It is where you get paid, and the visitors become your customers. To enhance sales opportunities at this step, making the buying experience as effortless as possible for your customers is crucial. That is why you should offer simple, safe, and diverse payment methods on your eCommerce store.

Why Should You Offer Different Payment Methods?

For eCommerce businesses, cart abandonments and lost revenues can be avoided by offering customers a list of payment methods that they want to use or are accustomed to. There were not many options in the past, and most of the online payments were made through money orders, cheques, or bank deposits. But today, with the advanced technologies we have, there are various methods of payments that shoppers can use. To cater to a wide range of customer bases and earn more conversions, allowing all to choose their preferred electronic payment system is critical. Since the different types of payment systems have distinctive charge rates and their unique mechanisms to make payments, they can influence different groups of customers. Delivering alternative payment services will let you merchandise to mixed demographic groups in various geographic regions and have the largest target audience possible. Working with different companies and offering their products as your eCommerce store’s payment methods will also help increase the awareness and trust in your brand.

How to Choose the Best Payment Method for Your eCommerce Store?

The eCommerce industry is flooded with many eCommerce payments services, and it may be frustrating to choose how you accept online payments. Before you decide which electronic payment methods to offer, you should define your target audience. With the variety of your customers, the local, geographical, or cultural shopping habits may differ, and how they respond to different payment technologies can change. Providing types of payment systems that your audience doesn’t trust or are not interested in may cause you to lose sales. But again, if your eCommerce store lacks the proper range of online payment systems, it can lead your potential customers to abandon their carts and leave your website mid-checkout. It would help your business remarkably if you offered different and uncomplicated options that best suit your target audience to allow them to shop at peace and complete their purchases. Analyzing what your audience expects and defining your business niche is what you need to do first. Then you should evaluate different methods of electronic payments to find the ones best suits your business’s requirements.

What are The Most Popular Payment Methods in eCommerce?

If you have an internationally operating eCommerce store, the most frequently used types of payments will be credit and debit card payments. However, there are plenty of other payment methods which may be used at different rates in different parts of the world. For example, while cash is the most popular payment method in India, in Europe, it is not widely preferred.

Here are the 10 most popular online payment systems around the world that you can (and should) offer on your website:

Credit Card Payment

Paying with credit cards is the most used payment method in the eCommerce industry. Since credit cards are easy and mostly safe to use, the high popularity of using them in online purchases is no surprise. Shoppers only need to enter their card details at the checkout to finish buying the products. CVV, short for Card Verification Value, is what makes credit cards more secure. By comparing card holders’ information and the CVV numbers, businesses can detect any fraud. Besides being simple to use, shoppers use a credit card also to make use of its extra features, such as discounts and reward programs. Additionally, they can benefit from credit card usage in credit scoring. All these advantages ensure credit card payments still take the lead, despite having countless and more innovative competitors. As you probably heard their names before, some of the most popular, internationally used credit cards are American Express, Visa, and MasterCard.

Debit Card Payment

Debit Cards are also widely used worldwide, and using them for online purchases is a close second to credit cards as the most used payment method. While the process of purchasing is the same, debit card payments permit users only to use their savings in the connected bank account; however, credit card payments are made at the end of the billing period, way after the actual purchase is made. As a result, shoppers who use credit cards tend to spend more than they can pay. Hence, debit cards can be a better choice for people who have lower financial limits and don’t want to exceed them.

Bank Transfer

One of the most secure payment methods is Bank Transfers when it comes to online shopping. Since it may cause online shoppers to fall into swindlers’ hands, people tend to be hesitant while paying on eCommerce stores; some even don’t want to enter their credit/debit cards’ credentials. Now, the vast majority of people prefer to use credit/debit cards and bank transfers going out of fashion despite being considered safer. To use them is safer because the transactions should be approved by the customers, meaning they have to authenticate and verify each purchase from their online bank accounts. Correspondingly they are making the shopping experience much longer and slower.

Direct Deposit

Using Direct Deposit, as its name indicates, allows buyers to transfer the charges to the sellers’ accounts directly. With direct debit mandates, users can send requests to their banks to authorize regular payments. By eliminating the risk of theft or loss, they can be a safer payment method to use, especially for non-eCommerce purchases. Moreover, no intermediary is needed; thus, it is a fast way to transfer money. Direct Deposit payments are most commonly used to schedule recurring expenses such as salary payments for businesses or subscription-based fees of individuals. Even though it may lose its popularity to innovative solutions, it will always remain a sufficient payment method.

Cash

Cards have the advantage in terms of online payments. Cash, a physical item in a virtual world, is becoming an undesirable payment method as many innovative competitors arise. Yet, in some areas, especially in developing countries, like Brazil, Mexico, and India, it remains important. eCommerce shoppers use this method for cash-on-delivery transactions. It can be risky to pay with cash because some cash-on-delivery providers may send you invoices later than you pay them, and you cannot always be sure if the billing is made rightfully. But then paying with cash is a convenience for those who are not using any cards.

App Payments

One of the latest features of eCommerce store apps is allowing its users to buy directly through them. As the eCommerce industry grows, big tech companies want to get the most share of the cake. Facebook, being a social media platform, lacked online store features. Considering the impact of itself and its branches Instagram and WhatsApp, it was a huge opportunity loss not being able to sell to their users. In the past few years, we saw that this loss was successfully cleared up by adding marketplaces and giving their users the capability to buy products on the apps without having to leave. With buy now/buy here options both in Facebook and Instagram and the rumors of having in-app ads and purchase options on WhatsApp, App payments will undoubtedly be more popular.

Electronic Checks

Electronic Checks, or E-Checks, in short, has practically the same process in use as standard paper checks, but since it can be done online, the challenges time and place may cause are eliminated, making e-checks much faster. Using them allows the shoppers to authorize the payment directly from their online bank accounts. E-checks was the first payment method for online shopping in North America and still is a popular option while also widely used in Europe. Aside from their ease of use, extra-low charges make e-checks a better and affordable payment method for larger sale volumes. 

Cryptocurrency

Increasing their popularity day by day, cryptocurrencies are no longer the money for the future; they are now commonly known and create new areas to be used worldwide. Not only Bitcoin but also tens of new altcoins are exchanged every day. In the past decade, they got popular among digital merchants as there were no chargebacks or taxes. With the expansion in cryptocurrency transactions, governments and large businesses started to interfere and established some regulations; however, this payment method still has the lowest fees in the market. Despite the risks of ever-changing monetary value and uncertainty of future governments’ approaches to coins, they are still promising for online payments.

Electronic Wallets

Electronic Wallets, also named E-Wallets or Digital Wallets, allow online shoppers to purchase products faster and smoother. Because only one or two clicks are enough for completing a payment, the whole shopping experience can be done within seconds. E-Wallets work as storage for both the shoppers’ information and the funds. After linking their bank account to an e-wallet, if the users choose to pay online with their e-wallets, they will be directed to the e-wallet page, and entering their password will be enough for buying a product. By eliminating the need to enter your credentials and credit/debit card information each time you want to buy something online, e-wallets are becoming highly favorable for people. The most popular e-wallets like Amazon Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay, and Ali Pay are already thriving amongst the payment methods.

eCommerce Payment Gateways

Payment gateways are eCommerce businesses’ services for their shoppers, which processes credit/debit card payments. The first examples of payment gateways were the native systems that individual eCommerce services designed. When the number of eCommerce stores and online shoppers ascended, these native systems had to convert into more standardized platforms for more merchants to use them simultaneously. Today, the eCommerce industry is filled with a vast range of payment gateway providers that generate fast and secure links between shoppers, merchants, and banks. Since the competition is hot, it may be costly at first, but even if the cost of implementing and holding them on your website is high, the return on investment will most likely be satisfactory. There are tens of great payment gateways like PayPal, Square, and Stripe, and more businesses are coming up with new one’s day after day.

What is a Payment Gateway and How Does It Work?

Payment Gateways has become a steady part of the eCommerce industry, and various companies provide these services and integrate their solutions to your eCommerce store. Payment gateway providers, also known as payment service/solution providers or payment processors, offer these virtual gateways for merchants and shoppers and connect them with the necessary third parties – usually the banks – while handling the transactions. Digital payment gateways, or more commonly called eCommerce payment gateways, are the services that process the users’ payment information and generate links to allow them to complete their purchases. After you sign up and integrate a payment gateway tool, you as a business owner will only need to wait for the payment processors to deposit the purchases in your merchant account.

What are the Best Payment Gateway Tools?

You can select one or more payment gateways to serve you and your customers. Before choosing the right gateways for your business, you should do your research well. Here is some key information for the 10 best eCommerce payment gateways: