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There’s a lot to consider when making the decision to add a payment gateway to your store. You have to factor in your needs, your customers’ expectations, and what the fees are for each payment gateway.
Ecommerce payment gateways can be tricky to understand because they all seem alike at first. We researched this subject and have distilled it down to a few key points.
Pricing and plans depend on what you require, so we would recommend either sifting through each gateway’s pricing and feature pages or consulting experts.
At a glance, all of these gateways look very similar but they differ in their applications.
Payment Gateway | Hosted or integrated | Requires SSL | Bundled Merchant Account | Transaction Fee | Monthly Fee | Charge back Fee | Currency | Countries | Supported Platforms |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
PayPal Standard | Hosted | No | Yes | 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction | $0 | $20 | 25 | 202 | ALL. Since PayPal usually redirects to its own site, no platform integration is necessary. |
PayPal Pro | Integrated | Yes | Yes | 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction | $30 | $20 | 25 | 202 | ALL. |
Authorize.Net | Integrated /Hosted | Yes | No | 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction | $49 setup fee + $25/month | $25 | 11 | USA, Canada, UK, Europe, Australia. | Shopify, Volusion, Bigcommerce,WordPress, Magento, and more. |
2Checkout | Integrated /Hosted | No | Yes | 3.5% + $0.35 per transaction | $0 | $20 | 87 | 200 | Bigcommerce, Magento, Spree Commerce, WooCommerce, Shopify, and more. |
Stripe | Integrated /Hosted | Yes | Yes | 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction | $0 | $15 | 100+ | 39 | Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, Bigcommerce,Spree Commerce, and more. |
Braintree | Integrated /Hosted | Yes | Yes/No (depending on plan) | 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction | $0 | $15 | 130+ | USA, Canada, Australia, Europe, Singapore, Hong Kong, China, Malaysia, New Zealand. | Magento, Spree Commerce, Bigcommerce,WooCommerce, Shopify, and more. |
WePay | Hosted | Yes | No | 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction | $0 | $15 | 1 | USA | Bigcommerce, Magento, Spree Commerce, WooCommerce, Shopify, and more. |
Dwolla | Hosted | No | No | 0.5% per transaction, with a minimum fee of $0.01, and maximum fee of $5.00 | $0 | $15-25 | 1 | 162 | Spree, Shopify, Magento, 3D Cart, and more. |
Square | Hosted | Yes | No | 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction. | $0 | $0 | 1 | USA, Canada, Japan, Australia, UK. | Bigcommerce, Shopventory, Weebly, Magento, and more. |
Here are the factors that are commonly overlooked when selecting a payment gateway:
A hosted or third-party gateway means your customers are redirected from your website to a secure page where they can enter their credentials (for example: PayPal). Once the payment is processed, the customer is redirected back to confirm the order and continue with checkout.
In an integrated gateway, your customers won’t have to leave your website to type in payment info and to place orders. This generally requires an SSL certificate, which is the standard encryption method to ensure the customer’s data is secure.
A hosted gateway is easier to integrate because the gateway is fully responsible for security. On the other hand, with an integrated gateway, you have more control. You keep your branding and customers don’t have to navigate away from your site.
Reputation is everything. This is an important consideration because if you choose a payment gateway users aren’t familiar with or decide to skip the SSL certificate, you’ll have abandoned carts left and right.
Ecommerce shops that grossly neglect security and endanger user privacy and data. Low customer confidence in your store reflects in the conversion rate. Bottom line.
This is an important consideration for smaller businesses because it is often easier and cheaper to set up bundled accounts. With bundled accounts, you generally have lower monthly fees. However, depending on the gateway there may be hidden fees, so you need to read the fine print. If your business already has a merchant account and you want to connect it to your gateway of choice, we recommend that you make sure your current merchant account is compatible with the gateway.
A very important consideration is cost. Since you incur most of the fees, your choice of payment gateway should heavily depend on the fee structure. Generally, fees can be divided into two parts: monthly and per-transaction fees. Monthly fees are based on the cost of subscription, and transaction fees can be either fixed or variable.
Some payment gateways like PayPal Pro and Authorize.Net charge a small monthly fee (<$30) in addition to a per-transaction fee, which can add up if you extrapolate over the course of a fiscal year.
Additionally, you should look into volume discounts if your business handles a high volume of sales/orders. More often than not, payment gateway providers do not explicitly state what these discounts are, so you may need to give them a call to find out.
With this information in hand, let’s compare payment gateway services.
PayPal is the most popular payment gateway on the market. Its name is synonymous with excellent customer service, quick transfers, and the highest conversion rates when compared to other payment types.
What are the key differences between PayPal business solutions?
PayPal Pro has the following additional features
For an extra $30, PayPal Pro is a pretty good deal. It’s a non-hosted gateway and requires an SSL certificate, unlike PayPal Standard.
The key differences are:
Since PayPal Pro and Braintree include an Express Checkout functionality, do not turn PayPal Express Checkout on or the two versions will conflict with one another.
*Configurable
**Requires use of the hosted templates in PayPal Payments Pro.
Source – PayPal Help Center
Authorize.Net has been around since 1996. Their seniority in the payment gateway market is a sign of reliability and security. However, it doesn’t have any features that differ greatly from other more affordable options.
The key differences are:
Dwolla is a US-based company that specializes in offering affordable cash transactions. The beauty of Dwolla is that it doesn’t have a middleman. It connects directly to your bank account.
The key differences are:
Both Stripe and Square recently emerged as two big contenders to giants like PayPal. Square excels in mobile payment processing, while Stripe is geared towards ecommerce payment processing. Both payment solutions offer lots of features for running businesses like sales, marketing, and CRM.
The key differences are:
2Checkout is one of PayPal Pro’s main competitors. Their latest platform, 2Checkout 2.0, offers an all-in-one monetization platform that can handle simple transactions, subscription-based products, and digital goods. Like PayPal, 2Checkout covers almost the entire world. However, there are some caveats.
The key differences:
Magento recommends PayPal Express Checkout and Braintree along with other PayPal solutions like PayPal Payments Standard and Payments Pro. We will show you the difference between all of these a bit later. The good news is that Magento and PayPal provide solutions for merchants who are just starting out as well as established businesses. Like Magento says, “As your business grows, you can combine these with additional PayPal payment solutions.”
In addition to PayPal and Braintree, Magento also supports the following payment gateways:
Don’t worry if the payment gateway you’re interested in isn’t on the list. You can integrate with any major payment gateway through an API (or a Magento Extension). Using an API is easier if you’re tech-savvy or have a development team.
Installing an extension is much easier; however, not all gateways have their own Magento extensions, which means you become dependent on a third party. So whether the gateway has a good extension can be the deciding factor. Not to mention that some third-party extensions cost upwards of $450 (such as the Stripe gateway extension by Mageplaza).
The main takeaway from this comparison is that your choice of payment gateway for your store should stem from factors like security, features, cost, and customer acceptance. There’s no point in adding a gateway with tons of features that no one knows about. And there’s no point in adding an expensive gateway that has high user acceptance if you only use a few features.
The out-of-the-box Magento recommended and supported solutions — PayPal and Braintree cover a lot. You get tons of features for a reasonable price. If that’s not enough for you or your store is located outside the US, it would make sense to add another gateway. There are also new kids on the block, like Klarna, which offer flexible payment options that are worth looking into.
The main idea here is that you can have more than one payment gateway. As an added bonus, most payment gateways are free-to-use (transaction fees still apply) so you can try them out without much commitment. There’s no silver bullet for payment solutions, so we recommend staying up-to-date with trends and paying close attention to customer feedback and abandoned carts.
Types of payment gateway really can be challenging to understand because they all seem alike at first. Now I understand better payment gateway comparison. That’s spot on! Thanks for sharing!
Dwolla vs PayPal vs Stripe vs Paypal vs Square all seemed to have the same features. After comparing these payment gateways in the article I finally can see a clear difference. Really relevant!