What is a payment gateway and how does it work?

Which payment gateway should I choose?

Other than the usual math you weigh up such as how much they take as a percentage or a fixed fee from each transaction; 

You want to think about the industry you’re in and which gateways would be best for you and your business.

This is important because some payment gateways do not support certain industries.

An example of such is Paypal not supporting CBD and Vape, and other payment gateways not accepting Adult-type products.

Therefore, continuing to use that can give a negative toll on your visa and banking account if you are blacklisted.

As an example, Shopify’s payment gateway has a credit card rate as low as 2.2% plus a 20 pence fee per transaction.

This definitely varies between any payment gateway you go for.

However, you definitely want to not only think about the costs but also the:

• Service
• Technical support
• The longevity
  
  
  

Can you have multiple payment gateways?

Keep in mind that you can have multiple payment gateways involved.

This could be connecting Stripe and Paypal onto one site so that the end-user can have more options on how they want to pay!

This can also include Google pay and Amazon pay also.

Industry-specific payment gateways usually come with their own plugin.

Depending on the platform you use such as Shopify or Woocommerce – it would require you to add it as an alternative payment gateway.

So when you look into payment gateways, it is often that they will require you to be self-employed or have a registered bank account.

They may ask for personal and business info as well as paperwork, an ID and proof of address.

As they all vary, some may ask for more details such as product specifics and annual turnover.

However, overall, it should be a simple process and usually takes at most a week or so to set up.

But stay open-minded for delays and details to provide and prove to them. 

Don’t overthink or delay the process, it’s usually swift in most cases.

But the last thing you need on your mind is having everything set up apart from a form of getting paid!

Where to connect your payment gateway

If you have the time and tech-savviness to connect this yourself, you can connect it within the payments section of your website settings.

You can see here how to set up payment methods on Shopify and Woocommerce.

Simply follow the steps of which gateways they have there already available, and enable which ones you’ll be working with.

If you can’t find your payment gateway there, then ensure you have checked alternative methods.

On the other hand, you can download the necessary plugins to piece them together for them to appear.