What is a Payment Gateway?
Shopify users can now rejoice as Shopify Payments is made available. By letting merchants manage their payment gateway directly in the user dashboard of Shopify, Shopify Payments makes running a store easier and cheaper. Shopify Payments is available for users in the US, Canada, Ireland, and UK-based merchants too.
What Is a Payment Gateway?
Payment gateways play an important role by allowing merchants to take payments from their consumers through their website or mobile apps. With the transfer of key information between payment portals such as the acquiring bank/front end processor and websites/web-enabled mobile devices, a payment gateway helps process card payments for online as well as conventional brick and mortar stores. Though the price and commission rate charged by a payment gateway is important to consider, you should also examine the features they offer as well before choosing any one. Several payment gateways even carry hidden charges that you should beware of. Remember that all payment gateways aren’t created equal.
How does a payment gateway work?
A payment gateway involves four simple steps to complete the entire process:
- Collection: After your consumers have decided to buy a product or service, they go to your payment page and submit the details of their credit card. This information is passed over to your payment gateway.
- Authentication: Your payment gateway transmits this information to your bank account in an encrypted form.
- Authorization: The authorization response (that shows the approval of sale) is displayed to the cardholder and sent to the merchant. This will mean that you can deliver the products or services that your consumers have placed orders for.
- Settlement: This is the last step where your bank verifies the transaction data and credits your accounts with the sale proceeds. The time taken for the actual money to get deposited in your account could vary depending on the payment gateway you use. While some payment gateways have speedier payment processing and can get the money in your account in almost real time, some others may take a long time of almost 21 working days.
Payment gateways also use a lot of tools to screen orders and steer clear of fraudulent cases as much as possible. Some common tools used for payment gateway fraud detection include:
- AVS checks
- Verification of delivery address
- Geolocation
- Computer finger printing identification technology
- Identity morphing detection
- Velocity pattern analysis
Some payment gateways may even compute tax amounts to approve requests that have been sent to the processor.
List of Shopify Payment Gateways
1. 2Checkout
Merchants who don’t have Shopify Payments available to them can now use 2Checkout to make the most of their on line sales by adapting to local languages, currencies, and payment methods. With its simple, PCI-compliant system that emphasizes security, Shopify supported gateway of 2Checkout is an effective choice for Shopify merchants.
2. Authorize.net
Any USA-based business can integrate Authorize.net with Shopify quickly and in a hassle-free manner. Whether you are new to Shopify or have been using it for long, Authorize.net helps you benefit from a simple and secure card processing through your Shopify stores.
3. Checkout.com
This is a popular card payment processing that’s easy and fast to integrate. With an easily configurable design and cross browser/device compatibility, it’s completely mobile enabled as well- all of which make this a good choice.
4. GoCoin
Giving your customers the choice to pay in their chosen currencies is a key factor to maximize your online store’s sales. With GoCoin payment gateway, you can now accept lite-coin, bitcoin and dogecoin payments from customers. With its easy integration into your Shopify store, GoCoin lets you start accepting Bitcoin as well as other digital currencies through your online store right away.
5. NETbilling
This payment gateway lets you process all major credit cards for your Shopify store. Apart from processing numerous transactions online, or manually through the Virtual Terminal together with frequent transactions, this gateway comes with features like member reports, real-time reporting, customer contact lists, fraud defense, and a variety of online tools to manage your web masters, employees, and affiliates.
6. PaymentSense
Merchants in the UK can start accepting credit card payments right away by integrating this trustworthy payment gateway with their Shopify store. It comes loaded with several practical and convenient features such as fixed monthly fees, speedy setup, no contracts in the long term, and technical support specialists, as and when you need them.
7. PayPal Express Checkout
This Shopify supported PayPal Express Checkout payment gateway can be easily and quickly integrated into your e-commerce store. With its practical features and a flawless checkout process, it reduces cart abandonment rates significantly by providing all necessary information on a single web page - right from order details and tax estimates to shipping alternatives.
8. Realex
Being counted among Europe’s leading payment processing solutions, Realex can prove extremely useful for both seasoned and new merchants. It offers card storage, currency management, reporting, fraud management, and reconciliation. Since it integrates easily with your Shopify store, you can start accepting online payments made via credit cards using Realex to ensure your sales are fast and hassle-free.
9. SagePay Form
With an easy and fast integration (just 20 minutes) with your Shopify store, this payment gateway helps in credit card data collection and storage, offers payment pages’ customization and sends the buyers automated confirmation emails, thus making lives of merchants selling their products online easier.
10. WorldPay
Instead of redirecting your customers to a different page for checkout, integrating WorldPay Direct with your Shopify store will let your customer's process orders and pay for their chosen items right on your store’s page. This payment gateway supports all key currencies, accepts all major credit cards, offers fraud screening along with online reporting and management to merchants.
11. Shopify Payments
This is a safe, competitive and robust payment gateway that saves you from the inconvenience and time-consuming setup processes that a majority of payment gateways come with. Since Shopify and this payment gateway work together flawlessly, with absolute business management and real time syncing under the same roof, it’s the ideal solution for online merchants.
12. CyberSource
This payment gateway is approved by Shopify and is quick and easy to integrate into your Shopify store. With CyberSource, you can operate your business globally, accept multiple currencies, operate on a global scale produce tax calculations, automatically, and view reports that offer useful insights related to your online business activities.
13. Cardstream
Supported completely by Shopify, this reputable payment gateway processes debit and credit card payments for UK-based merchants apart from offering low monthly fees for merchant accounts, sourcing the best rates possible for such accounts and processing a high number of monthly orders.
14. Nochex
This payment gateway that’s popular in the UK comes with no annual or monthly fees, is PCI Level 1 compliant and 3D secure, offers instant fund availability, low transaction rates, payment pages that are custom branded, a personal account manager, and helps merchants accept payments made by the UK and international buyers.
15. Divido
Merchants who want to offer their customers (both offline and online) in one or more nations the option of paying through monthly installments while they get the entire sale proceeds right away, this payment gateway is the right choice. Using Divide, you can offer immediate finance at the point of sale, which would boost average order values, footfall as well as the conversion rates.
16. Affirm
Affirm offers online shoppers immediate finance at the point of sale. With its data-driven approach that looks ahead of a standard credit score, Affirm aims to tap into a broader population of consumer who makes online purchase. By integrating Affirm with your Shopify store, you can let your shoppers buy now and pay afterward in monthly installments at rational interest rates. This can help boost your sales order sizes and improve conversions apart from augmenting customer happiness.
17. Ignite Payment
All merchants – big, small, or those in-between, can benefit from this credit card processing solution, which is the authorized partner of First Data. Ignite Payments is PCI compliant and offers an integrated buying experience for all purchases – from mobile and in-store to online purchases. In addition to its extremely fast processing speeds, it also provides alternative payment capabilities and scalability to match the prospective growth of the business.
18. Bambora
This US payment gateway offers various packages for merchants from which they can take their pick. It comes with some great features that businesses can take advantage of such as mobile payment and recurring billing capabilities together with secure processing of credit cards.
19. Psigate
It is much more than your typical one-size-fits-all payment gateways. With this strong payment gateway, merchants can now get a safe payment solution for their e-commerce business that’s cost-effective, can process real-time transactions, and can be set up for frequent billing.
20. QuickBooks Payment
Fully supported by Shopify and easy to integrate with just a few steps, Intuit QuickBooks Payments offers merchants a professional, competent and trustworthy solution that can let them accept debit and credit card payments securely.
21. Plug’n Pay
This revolutionary payment gateway is popular among online merchants for processing credit card payments with lightning fast speed and offering high-tech fraud prevention tools along with its recurring billing capabilities and seamless functionality with Shopify stores.
22. PayJunction
Supported by Shopify, this payment gateway can be easily integrated with your Shopify store. It offers a wholly hosted shopping cart, web-based receivables and invoices, third party applications, quick payment processing and excellent security.
Conclusion
Though Shopify supports a wide range of payment gateways across the globe, we believe Shopify Payments to be the best choice. Rather than spending time integrating a payment gateway with Shopify and then invest some more effort and time to deal with administrative things, you can focus on other important aspects of your business when you use Shopify Payments. With it, you can have real-time knowledge of when your payments arrive, where your money is etc, apart from enjoying some savings on account of your Shopify transaction fees being waived. Though you will be charged a payment gateway fee, you would have paid it anyway, no matter what payment gateway you chose to use. So, leverage Shopify’s technology by using Shopify Payments that will let you focus better on your business goals.
