When it comes to payment gateways and processors, many businesses make the mistake of only utilizing one, even though offering multiple options could lead to faster revenue growth.
After all, a merchant looking to innovate must constantly evolve their infrastructure and develop a keen understanding of how to effectively market to target audiences. Utilizing a broad array of payment gateways to expand their reach into new demographics, geographies and more is thus a smart move.
Your ability to reroute transactions through alternative gateways without disruption to your business can have a major positive impact on revenue.
There are constraints, however, with merchants needing to find the best payment solutions for their e-commerce needs, without the limitations or delays other businesses may face. So, how can a merchant pivot to new payment options without losing their current momentum?
Elevate the Customer’s Experience
Customers are much more likely to come back and give repeat business if they are provided with an excellent customer experience. This includes offering an easy-to-use website, increasing the number of accepted transactions you have, approving transactions more quickly and being able to accept many different types of payments conveniently.
A company that cannot accept payments the way their customers prefer may lose out to competitors that can better suit their needs. To ward against this, make sure to reduce false declines, cut latency and give customers the ability to pay how they prefer; these three things are essential to providing a great customer experience.
Stay Ahead of the Curve
One of the most significant benefits of utilizing multiple payment gateways is the ability to stay ahead of the curve, especially as digital payments continue growing at a fast rate amidst the current e-commerce boom. With more competitors entering the online marketplace than ever before, disruptive business models are following suit.
Plus, you can hedge your bets against fraud and chargebacks, by being able to divert transactions to another partner if one gateway proves less than ideal based on contract requirements, fees and other issues. This can allow you to keep better relationships with your payment companies and customers alike.
Harness Cross-Border Opportunities
Having multiple payment gateways allows you to change swiftly, while increasing your geographic reach. This is especially true given that cross-border sales are increasing, while the costs for shipping and selling across borders is decreasing. Consider the fact that half of the payment gateways transact in only one or two currencies, and it becomes clear why connecting to multiple gateways is optimal for taking more currencies overall.
Easily Handle Sales Spikes
Your ability to reroute transactions through alternative gateways without disruption to your business can have a major positive impact on revenue, especially since not all gateways can handle the volume of sudden spikes in sales increases. Also, you can support merchant accounts with more flexibility using multiple gateways with the distinct pros and cons of different providers, like combined gateway and merchant accounts, as well as gateway-only providers.
Mitigate the Potential Downtime
The ultimate takeaway from having multiple payment gateways is the importance of having a backup plan in place. As with any technology, payment gateways are not perfect. Very rarely does the proverbial hamster fall off the wheel, but when it does (and it’s out of the merchant’s control), a backup should be in place to switch over seamlessly. Most gateways tout a 99.9999% uptime, but what about that 0.0001%? It’s considered a best practice by any payments professional worth their salt to have a secondary gateway in place to cover any potential downtime.
Jonathan Corona has 15 years of experience in the electronic payments industry. As MobiusPay’s EVP, Corona is primarily responsible for day-to-day operations as well as reviewing and advising merchants on a multitude of compliance standards set forth by the card associations. MobiusPay specializes in merchant accounts in the U.S., EU and Asia. Follow them @MobiusPay on Twitter, Facebook and IG.