With so many people buying so much online, merchant services companies have come up with numerous ways to pay, each with advantages and risks. Including as many payment options as reasonably possible means your customers can buy from you however they feel most comfortable.
Payment Options Keep Growing
For the old school among us, checks can be accepted using the American Clearing House (ACH), Western Union (well, who sends telegrams anymore?) or via a direct link from their bank’s e-commerce website to your bank’s e-commerce website.
Credit cards remain popular because people are comfortable using them, there are legal safeguards already in place and users can earn points through their card’s rewards program. (These systems can use debit cards just as easily, but debit cards don’t have the same protections as credit cards.) Many credit card services have a plug-n-play attachment for your smartphone that lets you take credit cards anywhere you have cell service.
Third party service providers — GoogleWallet, Paypal, PopMoney, Shopify, SquareOne and others — provide essentially the same service: You can send and receive money without the other party knowing any sensitive information. Fees, availability and reach vary; each service has advantages and disadvantages. Again, many companies contract with two or three services to be sure their potential customers have an option they are comfortable using.
The Internet Keeps Changing
At Facet Web Tech, our e-commerce experts craft your business’ online sales system to give your customers all the options they need. We build custom-designed websites that are not only well-optimized to match your brand’s image, they are SEO-friendly, mobile-ready and social-media conscious. Call us or drop by our Peoria, Illinois, offices. We’ll do you proud with an e-commerce website solution custom-tailored to your business needs.
The Last Word: Cybersecurity
Identity thieves get a lot of press but the more mundane, old-school thief doesn’t want your name, he’s just happy to steal your money. Security breaches happen because there’s a new crop of hackers born every day. Fortunately, it doesn’t matter how clever an individual hacker might be, because the cybersecurity community, as a body, is a whole lot smarter and that community is dedicated to ruining every hacker’s day.
Having “trust seals” (like VeriSign, PayPal, or SSL) on your website means you’ve done the legwork to ensure that your customers will make a secure online payment. We’ll never achieve perfect security, but most people will never have to worry about it. (That’s our job.)