The popularity of online shopping is on the rise. In fact, according to Statista (2019) in 2018, approximately 1.8 billion people worldwide online shopped.
Why wouldn't they? Online shopping allows you to have the world at your fingertips. Connecting you to any product or service directly from your homebase. These products can span from groceries, to technologies, to skin care products, and services can span from online therapy, to online education, and so much more!
Profits from eCommerce in 2018 were as high as 2.8 trillion US dollars, and that number is projected to increase by 2 trillion US dollars by 2021 (Statista, 2019).
What makes online shopping possible? Payment gateways! Payment gateways allow online businesses to flourish. A payment gateway is an entity that provides a service in which credit card information of consumers is encrypted and securely collected from a bank and sent back to the merchant (techopedia, n.d.).
If you are an online merchant, you will likely want to connect your online business with a payment gateway. Below, we list the pros and cons of the top payment gateway options. We hope this helps you decide what online payment gateway you would like to use for your e-business.
Best Online Payment Gateways
- Stripe offers industry-standard seller protection, not allowing consumers to retract unapproved retracted payments from the online seller.
- Globally acceptable.
- Strong APIs and documentation. Stripe makes it easier than ever for software developers to integrate Stripe's eCommerce technology seamlessly into any online business.
- Hard to integrate into your website if you are a lower level software developer.
- Transaction fees tend to be on the higher end of normal.
- Easy to use. Simple and manageable.
- PayPal is the most well-known and thus is widely trusted by customers.
- PayPal handles the checkout process externally.
- PayPal can freeze accounts without warning. This can be hazardous to your business.
- Inconsistent customer support.
- Unlike Stripe, PayPal charges 5% on transactions under 10 dollars plus $0.05 per transaction.
- Customers can pay on Authorize.net with any major credit card, and with PayPal.
- There are no long-term contracts with Authorize.net.
- Authorize.net offers excellent customer support.
- Authorize.net has a fairly limited availability globally. It is only available in America, Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, and Europe.
- There is a $25 recurring monthly subscription charge.
