Integrating Multiple Payment Gateways 101

The Beymard Institute reports that 17% of customers cancel their purchases due to lengthy and complex checkout processes. Variations in decline rates, latency, and overall performance are observed among payment service providers (PSPs). Suppose you confine your payment stack to only one PSP (a payment vendor or payment processor). In that case, you hinder your company’s potential for growth in new markets, optimising margins, and meeting customer demands. Moreover, being exclusively tied to a single payment vendor leaves you limited control over fee changes and service disruptions. There is no way to respond promptly in case of payment service cancellations.

To address these concerns effectively, the best way is to integrate your payment infrastructure with multiple payment gateways. This article will covers the benefits of using multiple payment gateways and how businesses can incorporate them into their operations.

Multiple Payment Gateways – An Overview

In the world of e-commerce, payment gateways have become an integral part of conducting secure and efficient transactions. Multiple payment gateways refer to using more than one payment gateway to process electronic transactions. Using multiple payment gateways can offer several advantages to businesses. For example, providing customers various payment options can increase payment processing flexibility. This can be mainly useful for businesses that operate in multiple geographic locations or have a diverse customer base with varying payment preferences.

Moreover, using multiple payment gateways can mitigate the risk of downtime or service outages. If one payment gateway is experiencing technical difficulties, businesses can switch to another to ensure that transactions can still be processed.

How to Select an Alternative Payment Gateway?

When considering using multiple payment gateways, consider the features that the payment gateways offer. Choosing suitable payment gateways with the necessary elements can provide customers with a payment experience which is secure and seamless. Here are some essential features that businesses should look for when using multiple payment gateways:

1. Multi-Currency Payment Gateways

With global expansion, businesses should look for a multi-currency payment gateway to facilitate payments in different currencies. This feature will allow customers to see the transaction price in their local currency.

2. Multiple Payment Processor Integration

By integrating multiple payment processors, businesses can avoid the risks of depending on a single payment processor, providing greater redundancy and risk management.

3. Fraud Detection and Prevention

Payment fraud is a significant concern for businesses that accept electronic payments. To minimise this risk, you should look for payment gateways with advanced fraud detection and prevention features. These features include machine learning algorithms, real-time monitoring, and two-factor authentication.

4. PCI Compliance

Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance is essential for any payment gateway that processes credit card payments. PCI compliance ensures that payment gateways adhere to security standards and protocols, ensuring that sensitive payment data is kept safe.

5. Secure Data Transmission

Payment gateways should use secure data transmission protocols like Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) or Transport Layer Security (TLS) to encrypt payment data during transmission. This ensures that sensitive payment information is protected from unauthorised access and cyber-attacks.

6. Easy Integration

Payment gateways should be easily integrated with e-commerce platforms and other third-party applications. This can reduce integration costs and minimise any disruptions to business operations.

Remember these features of multiple payment gateways while selecting one for your business. So that you can provide your customers with an easy and secure payment experience by minimising the risks associated with multiple payment gateways.

Why Use Multiple Payment Gateways?

You need multiple payment gateways for several reasons. Firstly, it provides flexibility and a backup option if one payment gateway experiences technical issues or downtime, ensuring uninterrupted payment processing and minimising the risk of lost sales and dissatisfied customers. Different payment gateways offer varying features, services and pricing structures. Using multiple payment gateways, you can leverage each service provider’s strength to optimise payment processes and meet diverse customer preferences. This approach also enables your business to expand globally, as different gateways may support specific currencies, local payment methods or regional regulations. To illustrate, let’s consider an e-commerce store that primarily relies on a popular payment gateway. Integrating an alternative payment gateway as a backup option mitigates the risk of losing sales during temporary outages or technical glitches. If the first payment gateway encounters any issues, the store can seamlessly switch to the alternative gateway, ensuring operational continuity and minimising the impact of potential payment processing issues.

What Are the Advantages of Using Multiple Payment Gateways?

Using multiple payment gateways offers several advantages to businesses looking to expand their e-commerce operations. Here are some of the critical advantages of using multiple payment gateways:

1. Increased Payment Processing Flexibility

By offering customers with many payment options, businesses can cater to customers’ payment preferences, enhance customer satisfaction, and the chances of successful transactions. Multiple payment gateways enable businesses to provide greater payment processing flexibility, allowing customers to pay using their preferred payment method.

2. Multi-Currency Payment Options

Multiple payment gateways allow businesses to offer multi-currency payment options, enabling customers to pay in their local currency. This can help businesses increase their global reach and tap into new markets without incurring currency conversion fees. By providing multi-currency payment options, businesses can avoid any confusion or frustration arising from currency conversions.

3. Risk Management and Redundancy

Using multiple payment gateways can help businesses manage risks and minimise the impact of service outages or technical difficulties. If one payment gateway experiences downtime or service disruptions, you can switch to another gateway to ensure that transactions can still be processed. This redundancy can help businesses to minimise the risk of lost sales and improve their customers’ payment experience.

4. Integration With Multiple Payment Processors

Using multiple payment gateways allows businesses to integrate with multiple payment processors. This flexibility can also help businesses avoid being locked into a single payment processor, reducing the risk of vendor lock-in.

5. Improved Customer Experience

By offering multiple payment options and ensuring that payment gateways are easy to use and secure, businesses can enhance the customer experience and strengthen trust with their customers.

6. Reduced Cart Abandonment Rate

By using multiple payment gateways, businesses can provide customers with various payment options, reducing the likelihood of cart abandonment. This can help to increase sales and improve revenue.

By selecting payment gateways that offer these benefits, businesses can expand their e-commerce operations, reach new customers, and increase customer satisfaction.

What Are the Disadvantages of Multiple Payment Gateways?

While there are several advantages to using multiple payment gateways, there are also some potential disadvantages that businesses should be aware of. Here are some of the main disadvantages of using multiple payment gateways:

1. Increased Integration Complexity

Integrating multiple payment gateways can be complex and time-consuming. Each payment gateway may have its own APIs, documentation, and integration requirements, making the integration process challenging. This can also increase the risk of errors and inconsistencies in the payment processing system, leading to delays and customer dissatisfaction.

2, Higher Cost

Each payment gateway may charge different fees, including transaction, setup, and monthly fees. By using multiple payment gateways, businesses may incur additional costs that they would not have had to pay if they had used a single payment gateway.

3. Management Complexity

Managing multiple payment gateways can be challenging, particularly for businesses without dedicated payment processing teams. You should train your staff to use each payment gateway, monitor payment activity across multiple platforms, and reconcile payments from different gateways. This can increase the risk of errors and delays, impacting the customer experience.

4. Compliance Risks

Each payment gateway may have compliance requirements, including KYC (Know Your Customer) and AML (Anti-Money Laundering) checks. Ensuring compliance with these requirements can be challenging, mainly for businesses operating in multiple jurisdictions.

5. Customer Confusion

Offering too many payment options can confuse customers and complicate the checkout process. This can lead to cart abandonment and frustration, mainly if the payment options are not clearly presented or the customer is unsure which payment option to choose.

While integrating multiple payment gateways can provide businesses with increased payment processing flexibility and other benefits, it is vital to be aware of the potential disadvantages. To mitigate these risks, businesses should carefully evaluate their payment processing needs and select payment gateways offering the required features and benefits.

Tackling disadvantages - The Juspay way

Handling Outages

Having multiple payment gateways provides businesses with a backup plan in the event of an outage. This can help to reduce the impact of outages on businesses and ensure that they are able to continue processing payments from customers.

Seamless Customer Experience

In addition to providing backup in case of outages, having multiple payment gateways can also help businesses to improve the customer experience. Different payment providers offer different features and services, and having multiple options allows businesses to offer their customers a wider range of payment options.

Adding multiple PGs and PAs

Each processor has a limited number of tools and technologies. And if you need more than what’s offered, you have to integrate with an additional gateway. To avoid situations where you need the solution now but can only get it after two weeks of document collection and technical integration, it’s best to have a range of payment providers from the start.

Cost efficiency

But, integrating a payment gateway is quite expensive. Add fees and maintenance to that – and the numbers go through the roof.

Juspay takes the woes out of integrating and managing multiple payment gateways for your business. You can add, set up, and optimize all your payment options from one dashboard. And the best part is that you can increase your sales and retain customers by overseeing all the transactions from one place.

Ultimately, multiple payment gateways have become an essential aspect of modern-day businesses. The ability to offer customers multiple payment options can increase conversion rates, enhance customer experience, and expand your business’s reach. By leveraging the advantages of multiple payment gateways and addressing the associated challenges, you can provide a seamless and secure payment experience for your customers while driving business growth.

Click here to know more about integrating multiple payment gateways

How to Integrate Multiple Payment Gateways on a Website or App?

Integrating multiple payment gateways on a website or app is a strategic move that offers flexibility and convenience to both businesses and customers. It requires careful planning, technical expertise, and a robust management system to streamline the payment process and ensure a smooth and reliable user payment experience.

How to Integrate Multiple Payment Gateways on A Website?

Integrating multiple payment gateways on a website can be a complex process, but it is essential for businesses that want to offer their customers a range of payment options. Here are some steps that they can follow to integrate multiple payment gateways on their website:

• Choose A Payment Gateway: The first step in integrating multiple payment gateways is to choose the gateways that will be used. Evaluate gateways based on fees, processing times, options, and support. Create accounts and obtain integration credentials and API keys.

• Select A Payment Processor: A payment processor is a third-party service that manages the payment transactions between the payment gateway and the business’s bank account. Use a single or different processor for each gateway, like PayPal, Stripe, etc.

• Implement Gateway API: The next step is integrating the payment gateway APIs into the website’s payment system using appropriate programming languages and tools.

• Test Integration: Once the payment gateway APIs have been integrated, verify transaction processing by placing test orders and reviewing payment logs.

• Monitor Payment Activity: After completing the payment gateway integration, regularly monitor all gateways for accurate and error-free transactions using software or manual checks.

By following these steps, businesses can integrate multiple payment gateways on their website and provide customers with a seamless payment experience.

How to Integrate Multiple Payment Gateway on an App?

Integrating multiple payment gateways into a mobile app can be crucial to building a successful e-commerce platform. Integrating payment gateways into an app can be more challenging than incorporating them into a website due to the constraints of the mobile environment. Here are some steps to follow when integrating multiple payment gateways into an app:

• Determine Payment Gateway Compatibility: Before integrating any payment gateway into the app, it’s essential to determine if the payment gateway is compatible with the app’s platform, mobile operating system, and payment processing requirements. Ensure that the payment gateway can handle the transaction currencies, payment methods, and features needed for the app.

• Obtain API Credentials: Once the payment gateway has been selected, obtain the API credentials to connect to the payment gateway. This usually includes a merchant account and a secure API key to authorise transactions.

• Choose A Payment Processor: Select a payment processor to manage the payment transactions between the payment gateway and the business’s bank account.

• Integrate the Payment Gateway API: The next step is integrating the payment gateway API into the mobile app’s payment processing system. This can be done using a range of programming languages and tools.

• Test the Payment Gateway Integration: After the API has been integrated, test the payment gateway integration to ensure that transactions are processed correctly. This can be done by placing test orders and checking payment logs.

• Implement Payment Gateway Security: Ensure the payment gateway integration is secure by implementing tokenisation, SSL encryption, and fraud detection measures.

• Monitor payment Activity: After the payment gateway integration is complete, monitor payment activity across all payment gateways to ensure that transactions are processed correctly and there are no errors or delays.

Integrating multiple payment gateways into a mobile app requires careful planning and execution to ensure a seamless payment experience for users. By following these steps, businesses can integrate multiple payment gateways into their app and provide customers with a secure and convenient payment experience.

FAQs About Integrating Multiple Payment Gateways

1. How do I choose the suitable payment gateways to integrate into my platform?
When choosing a payment gateway to integrate into your platform, you should consider factors such as transaction fees, security features, customer support, user experience and payment options.

2. How can I monitor my payment transactions across different payment gateways?
Most payment gateway providers offer a dashboard or analytics tool that allows businesses to monitor payment transactions across different gateways. These tools provide real-time data on transaction volumes, success rates, and other vital metrics.

3. What are the costs associated with integrating multiple payment gateways?
The costs associated with integrating multiple payment gateways can vary depending on the payment gateway provider and the number of payment gateways you want to integrate. However, most payment gateway providers charge transaction fees and may also charge setup or integration fees.

4. How do I ensure a seamless customer payment experience using multiple payment gateways?
To ensure a seamless payment experience for your customers using multiple payment gateways, you should choose one with a user-friendly interface, easy integration, and various payment options. Additionally, you should test your payment processing system regularly to identify and address any issues that may arise