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Whiteboard Wednesday #2: How to choose a gateway | Clearhaus Learning

Today, Paul Barclay is going to take a look at what you need to consider when choosing a payment gateway. The payment gateway provides the payment window in your online shop. They also make the necessary integrations to enable your store to accept various payment methods, recurring transactions etc. The gateway collects the card details and transaction information on each purchase made in your shop - they then forward it to the acquirer, who processes the payment.

Hi guys, welcome to Whiteboard Wednesday. We’re back again. In our previous sessions we spoke about acquiring, payment solutions, and the bigger picture of all the partners within the ecosystem.

Reference back to the acquiring part, we will talk about the gateway and how that connects to the acquirer, and the needs of a partner in the gateway or payment service provider. What you need to look at, the best features to select a partner that’s going to work for your business, your website, your mobile store.

So, first of all, what is a gateway, what is a payment service provider? It’s the connection from your merchant site to the acquirer. So you’ve got to ask some questions around the compatibility of the gateway, the payment service provider, with the acquirer. Do they work together? That’s question number one.

If they do, great news. But then ask yourself some other questions. So the gateway partner or the PSP is your face to the consumer. It’s your cashier to the cardholder. So that cashier is instrumental in your interactions with the customer, and you have to ask your gateway partner how that cashier works for you, because you’ll be selling across e-commerce and mobile stores across the world, so you have to ask some key questions.

And what are some of those key questions? You want to ensure that your brand, when the cashier pops up, is white labeled to your brand, so it’s interactive and it’s a seamless experience with a consumer. You will be trading across the world, so you want to ensure that your gateway partner can offer you different payment methods which are localized across the world.

So it’s not just Visa or Mastercard, there are thousands of different alternative payment methods, which localize that consumer, so for you, when you sell, that consumer thinks you’re a local store offering the local payment method and the local currency, which is very important.

So, I’ve said about the cashier and the interaction with the consumer and how the cashier should be presented for seamless experience. What we should also consider as well, are the other services that the gateway partnership provide you or should be talking to you about with some consultancy.

So, I referenced before about acquiring and the card schemes and the whole ecosystem, they should be able to give you a good fraud solution, some tools to help you to reduce fraud and chargebacks from potential consumers. That’s one of the services that can help you.

With regards to 3D-Secure, this interaction in the gateway, it’s provided from the acquirer and Visa or Mastercard, but also 3-D Secure is a service that the gateway will provide you, so ensure that they can provide 3- D Secure to you.

You might have heard a lot about data security and breaches and hacking with card data. This is very, very important. You need to ensure that your gateway partner is compliant to something called PCI standards.

And PCI, all that means is that the gateway is robust enough to ensure that your data is not hacked from outside sources, and they maintain that level on a daily basis to ensure that your business is safe and secure.

And then finally, one of the key criteria is customer service. You are taking transactions from across the world 24/7, you’ve got queries, you need to talk to your provider. So, what’s their customer service like? Perhaps look on Trustpilot for advice, see their opening hours and how they can help you. So hopefully, that’s explained what gateway partner can help you with, and I hope that’s given you some insight into the transactions.

Thank you. Good to help.

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