5 Reasons Why People are Wary of Payment Gateway Services

Today’s blog post is a guest post by Debesh Kumar Jha, a digital marketing enthusiastic with knowledge of almost all niches. Apart from writing, he loves to spend time alone binge watching tech series and talks. In this post, Debesh shares 5 Reasons Why People are Wary of Payment Gateway Services.

Source: Quora

Introduction to Payment Gateway Services

By and by, it is becoming clearer that the payment gateway services are here to stay. Because think about it, is online going anywhere? The link between online businesses and payment gateway systems was irrevocably set when the first credit and debit gateway was developed by CyberCash in 1995. A quarter of a century later, technology has become only more agile and expansive. To take into its folds the growing complexities of business, which isn’t just overseas now, but also largely online, where goods can be bought and sold even when the different stakeholders of a transaction are time zones apart! It is thus no surprise that the current avatar of the payment gateway system is considered through the lens of necessity. Security, ease of customer experience and a single point integration, make many businesses vie for these gateways. Proof of to lies in the Payment Methods Report, which stated that in 2018 e-wallet transactions throughout the world had amounted to $ 41.8 billion. However, all is not necessarily well in the land of payment gateways, and the reasons are many. The topmost among these is security and a wrongly chosen service can lead to a serious breach. And this, in turn, can be a serious threat to the customer, which can then snowball into the relational territory between business and customer.

Reasons for people to be wary of payment gateway services

The following are typically some common and not-so-common reasons that people keep away from them.

1 Too many hidden fees

It’s a real problem that some payment gateway services tend to keep their fee structure a secret. It would be a stretch to say that they don’t reveal any part of it at all, but the cumulative amount is not known to the business until they’ve signed up. A wholesale fee and a markup fee is typically what constitutes the total fee that needs to be paid. The wholesale fee stays more or less similar to gateway services. But it is the markup fee that can vary a lot since this really is the profit for the gateway service business. Add to this scenario the fact that some gateway providers include special fees for withdrawals, cancellations and batch processing.

2 Technical integration issues.

When a business needs to use a payment gateway, API integrations are absolutely necessary. These integrations then ensure that banks, merchant and customer are then on the same page. One of the biggest resistances a business can have is the issue with technicalities cropping up time and again. This is where the need for seamless payment gateway services comes in. Where developer material is simple, well-documented and easy to follow. Because believe it or not, with technical hiccups, the whole chain of stakeholders is affected, one by one.

3 Inadequate infrastructure

When businesses are considering suitable online payment gateway services, one of the most important factors they want to be assured of is infrastructure. Without a robust infrastructure, a gateway service can’t make room for multiple currencies and neither can it accommodate a multi-payment-channel format. Any business that uses this service is then stuck with fewer options and a whole lot of effort to move the different pieces of data around. A robust infrastructure, on the other hand, allows for many currencies and channels to co-exist, making transactions flexible for both businesses and their customers. A single point interface in a well-designed payment gateway service also leads to businesses saving unnecessary vendor costs and also saving time in the process because transaction reconciliations are possible through centralised reporting.

4 Patchy support

If someone goes into the fundamentals of payment gateway services, they will see that the scenario encompasses hundreds of complex processes tied together into an interface that both the business and its customers are able to comprehend. Integrations themselves can take multiple attempts and other technical issues can also crop up anytime. One of the reasons people are wary of online payment gateway services is because technical support can potentially be patchy. And that could mean the business not knowing technical nuances they ideally should know about, a real human presence not guiding them through set-up and no timely intervention later if issues were to occur.

5 Questionable security

Another very real problem that businesses and users often think about is online fraud. Since online transactions require the back and forth passage of sensitive data, it is essential that payment gateway services offer proofing that one can trust. However, this isn’t always the case and businesses suffer at length. Take the proof contained in the survey conducted by CRIF between December 2018 and April 2019 providing a peek into the German context. 97% of online shops in Germany have already faced fraud once during their time of operations. While this is just one of the many examples, it is true that worldwide, online security is a factor of concern that businesses, as well as users, face. And as a business, one needn’t have to take on the responsibility of compliances. The ideal thing to do is to sign up with a payment gateway provider that is already PCI DSS compliant. This could potentially save a lot of hassle as well as precious time that could then be directed into the business.

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