Last Updated on March 12, 2024 by admin
From exchanging goods under the barter system to transferring money in the blink of an eye, mankind has come a long way. Payment gateways are the latest advancement in this field and can rightly be considered as the cornerstone of secure online monetary transactions. Payment gateways act as a bridge between the customer’s and the merchant’s bank and provide a safe window for the transfer of money.
In our domestic context, online transactions in India have jumped to 25.5 billion real-time payments in 2020, making it the highest in the world. Factors like demonetisation and Covid-19 have anyhow helped to the cause and made transaction volume share for instant payments to be 15.6 percent and nearly 23 percent for other electronic payments in the year 2020.
But choosing the right kind of payment gateway is equally important as it can make or break the online transactions as well as the rapport of the merchant using it due to the fact that India has witnessed a massive surge in online transactions in the past few years. So what are the points that one needs to keep in mind while choosing a suitable payment gateway in India for their business? And what are the mistakes that should be avoided?
Let’s find out!
Payment gateways make or break an online transaction, so they should be chosen wisely.
Table of Contents
Mistakes to avoid while choosing payment gateways
There are a lot of factors involved in choosing the right payment gateway for India. Merchants tend to make the following mistakes while making a decision on picking a payment gateway for the Indian markets.
1. The Cheaper, The Better?
Not all the good things can be evaluated on how cheap they are. The same goes when you choose a payment gateway in India. As there are a number of payment gateway providers in this country, the competition is often played on lowering down prices by compromising with key aspects of the payment gateway. A lower price may be really attractive at the first sight but it should be kept in mind what is the purpose of using the payment gateway altogether. Is it going to make your work easier? Or is it pushing you into a cycle of exhaustion and frustration?
Apart from that, hidden costs and other features that make you pay additional money should be kept an eye on. One must do thorough research on this before investing.
2. Red Flags, Security Alert!
The security aspects while choosing a payment gateway for online transactions cannot be ignored. While looking for a payment gateway in India, make sure you go through all the approvals required by the relevant agencies to operate. By doing this, you can be aware of all the possible repercussions that might be harmful to your money and your reputation.
This point should be kept in mind especially if your business is time-sensitive or data-sensitive. You should ensure that the payment gateway is compiled in accordance with the security standards like PCI-DSS to protect your customers’ sensitive information.
3. Ignoring the Flexibility Aspect
Times in the online transaction world are changing rapidly, and this has given rise to the need for flexibility. Sadly, this aspect is often overlooked by the merchants who are choosing payment gateways in India. Traditional banking payment gateways don’t have their flexibility game strong.
Having an inflexible payment gateway system can limit your migration ability in search for better features and reduced costing. Whereas, a flexible payment gateway service gives you the ability to scale.
4. Not Giving Your Customers Wide Options
Being a merchant, it is extremely important to not limit your customers. When it comes to payment methods, having a payment gateway that does not allow you multiple options of receiving payments can stand the risk of losing your customers.
Regardless of how your customers pay most often, it is always a better idea to give them maximum choice of the different payment methods. When a business chooses a payment gateway in India, it must ensure that the customers are available with all the payment options and not just a few. Even though crest cards are preferred most in India, other payment methods like UPIs have become quite popular these days.
5. Not Having Proper Customer Support
Several payment gateway services in India limit their customer support to raising tickets or sending emails. Under such a condition, users are bound to follow manual instructions to fix their problems.
The customer support system of the payment gateway should be designed in such a way that it caters to the needs of merchants of all kinds, be it someone who is an email person or someone who prefers talking to sending emails. It is also so crucial to check whether the provider offers live technical support so that any technical issue can be quickly resolved.
Final Statement
Payment gateways are now becoming an inseparable part of the virtual world. It is very important to provide the customers the right kind of experience to encourage them to transact online. Customers expect fast and hassle-free payment processes and it should be the priority of merchants to use the right kind of payment gateways to provide their customers with the right kind of experiences. With the need to compete and be efficient when it comes to processing payments, payment gateway in India is becoming elementary for merchants in this country.
