You can read our explanation of the options for building an on-line shop in our Website Components section by clicking here.
Once visitors have selected the contents of their basket & passed through the checkout pages of the on-line shop, there are several options available for processing payments for orders received from your web site. They fall into two categories.
Most e-commerce websites will offer the customer more than one method of paying but may indicate their preferred method. Each method will have different set up costs, fees, administrative duties and risks associated with them and so the best one will be specific to each business.
Automated online payment processing of credit cards can save the customer and the merchant time and make for a smoother transaction process.
There are three main options:-
This approach requires the merchant to obtain Internet Merchant Account from an Acquiring Bank and then integrate their website with a Payment Service Provider (Gateway), who will transmit card details from the merchants website to the Acquiring Bank. The Acquiring Bank deposits the money into the merchant's regular Business Account.
The Acquiring Bank will carry out thorough credit checks. Typical charges for an Internet Merchant Account might be a set up fee of £200.00 plus a monthly fee of £25.00. It pays to shop around. The more transactions made, the less each transaction will cost.
UK Acquiring Banks include:
Some websites allow merchants to develop shop fronts within a larger website. An example is eBay, which some companies use as an alternative or addition to developing their own website.
Advantages include:
Merchant's should acquaint themselves with the fraud protection and chargeback policies of the various Payment Processing Companies and Banks.
Some merchants prefer to process payments off-line. A merchant may already have a cost effective process in place which they use to process payments that do not originate on the web. Or perhaps the product is a complex one and customers may sometimes order the wrong one. A merchant can confirm the details of the order with the customer and avoid refund expenses if there has been a mistake.