Payment Gateways - Selection criteria and configuration prerequisites
Published: 2020-10-07 05:25:29

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title: Payment Gateways - Selection criteria and configuration prerequisites

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Payment gateways connect your site to your bank account. This article tells you more. Use our tips to make the right choice. Find out about the conditions required by the majority of providers to ensure the security of personal data.

Payment gateways are essential in the world of e-commerce. Indeed, to be able to receive money through your customers, you must have a gateway. In short, a payment gateway ensures the connection between your website and your banking institution. In some cases, this provides the connection between your site and your online wallet. The purpose of this article is to see how payment gateways work. We will also talk about the requirements imposed by the owners of the gateways and finally, we will discuss the most popular on the market.

<h2>I - How payment gateways work</h2>

Roughly speaking, a gateway is a web application or recovered software that allows you to communicate with your bank through your website. Indeed, a direct connection between your website and your bank account is currently not possible. You must between e-commerce owners call on the supplier being able to give you codes to install on your site to accept payments by credit card.
<h2>How it works?</h2>

<h3>Generally speaking, you should:</h3>

<ul>
<li>Get in touch with suppliers offering this type of service. There are several depending on your locality, type of website, or budget.</li>
<li>Reassure you that they offer a possibility to connect with your platform. However, it is not possible to easily connect all gateways to all web solutions. To this end, you must see a developer or make sure that the supplier supports your solution.
<li>Connect your website with their app. Alternatively, if you have access to their programming interface, you can use it.</li>
<li>Establish a connection between your bank account and the software. Alternatively, you need to make sure you have a way to get hold of your money.</li>

<h2>Some basic rules</h2>

The basic principle in setting up a payment method on a website is security. Several providers have established a list of conditions that must be met in order to use their service. Below are some rules to follow:
<h3>Have an SSL / TLS certificate (see https on the browser)</h3>

SSL certificates are intended to encrypt communication between your server and your visitor's browser. In theory, if by chance a malicious person came into possession of the data sent by a visitor to your site, he would only see encrypted information. In practice, this is not always the case; because SSLs have several versions which provide security at different levels.

<h3>Have a privacy policy page</h3>

Considering the fact that you collect personal information from your customers, it only makes sense to educate them on how you handle their data. The privacy policy page informs customers about the measures you have in place to ensure the confidentiality of their data.

<h3>Cookie Policy and Other Terms.</h3>

If your website uses tools such as cookies, or software to collect data, you must specify them. Typically required pages are:
<ui><li>Terms and conditions</li>
<li>Return conditions</li>
<li>The cookie policy.</li></ui>

<h3>Other measures to ensure the security of your eCommerce</h3>

In addition to following your supplier's recommendations, you must put in place a security process to avoid any future problems. Some of these measures are:

<h3>Protect your forms against spam</h3>

Unwanted emails or spam weaken your email server and are sometimes the source of several other security problems. To be able to effectively fight spam, you can install a Captcha. You can also read our article on "How to protect your website against spam with Google Captcha V3 [PHP]"for how to install Captcha on your website.

<h3>Force your users to use more secure passwords</h3>

If the passwords used by your customers are not secure enough, it could be a loophole. Some tips that you can plan when setting up your payment process or creating an account can be:

<ui><li>Require a certain length of character. For example a minimum of 8 characters.</li>

<li>Prompt user to include special characters</li>
<li>Request a mix of character types.</li></ui>

A trick may be to autosuggest a password to the user.

<h3>Filter the information sent through your forms.</h3>

The types of information submitted through online forms can never be trusted. Indeed, if you do not filter your forms, several people can use them to destroy your site. Some types of vulnerabilities you might have are:
<li>Sending malicious code via your forms</li>
<li>Injecting your database</li>
<li>Theft of your data</li>
<h2>II - How to choose payment gateways for your website?</h2>
Before embarking on finding payment gateways for your website, you should ask yourself the following questions:
<ui><li>Is it easy to integrate with your web solution?</li>
<li>Is there a way to sync the software with your bank account?</li>
<li>What are the fees per transaction?</li>
<li>What are the security measures implemented by the company?</li>
<li>Will I be able to customize the payment page?</li></ui>
<h3>Can it be easily integrated with your web solution?</h3>
There are thousands of payment gateway providers across the world. However, not all suppliers have implemented the codes to easily integrate their solution into all types of applications. You could still refer to their documentation to see how to do it "yourself". In most cases, the most popular solutions give you access to their development interface to be able to make the connections. That said, if you are keen on using a solution, you can work with a developer.
<h3>Is there a way to sync the software with your bank account?</h3>
A good number of providers easily connect with bank accounts. However, you must take the time to educate yourself to avoid any surprises.
<h3>What are the fees per transaction?</h3>

The fees associated with integration or transactions may vary from vendor to vendor. As an example, Paypal fees are from 2.9% + $ 0.30 per transaction in Canada. You should therefore take the time to compare before you decide. You should keep in mind that cost is not the only criterion to consider.

<h3>What are the security measures implemented by the company?</h3>

The security of your data and that of your customers is very important in online commerce. For this purpose, you must take the time to find out about the provider you want to use. Some elements to take into account could be:
<li>Reviews from other customers</li>
<li>The privacy and security policy in place</li>
<li>Their approach to protecting data</li>
<h3>Will I be able to customize the payment page?</h3>

Some providers only offer the possibility of using the ifs reams to integrate the payment gateway on the websites. And as a result, it affects the performance of websites and reduces the number of online orders. Taking the time to reassure yourself that you have the ability to customize could be helpful. In most cases, if you have access to the API, you can control the visual of your payment page.

<h2>III - Some examples of payment gateway providers</h2>

There are thousands of solutions for websites. Among which we can cite:

<b>Paypal</b> - Very popular gateway present in almost all countries of the world. It has the particularity of having several currencies depending on your country and to protect the consumer in the event of a dispute. One limitation of PayPal for certain countries is that you must have a bank account to be able to sync your account. For this, PayPal is not very suitable for countries that are still developing.
<b>Stripe</b> - Fairly easy to integrate; but not available in several countries. For the moment stripe is only present in 34 countries; contrary to PayPal which is present in more than 200 countries and in more than 25 currencies
<b>We Cash Up</b> - A better alternative for developing countries. If you don't have a bank account and are in a less industrialized country with people who don't use banks as a method of financial transaction, We Cash Up can help.