e-Commerce and merchant providers and gateways and… Oh, my!
For quite some time, I’ve been exploring ways to make it easier for people to make payments online. There’s the old standby, PayPal, and more recently I’ve been looking at Google’s Checkout API. In their most basic forms, both of these online payment solutions are easy to implement. They also require my customers to leave my website and go through several steps to complete their payment. Even with the increasing popularity of PayPal, that’s still an e-Commerce no-no. The rule of thumb is, “make it as easy as possible or people will go elsewhere”.
A more streamlined approach (at least, from a customer’s standpoint) is to use a payment gateway like Authorize.net or Plug N Pay. The details of how this works are best left to a full article on the subject. (Many such articles already exist, such as this one at Sitepoint.
Unfortunately for the small business owner, using a “professional” payment gateway also requires an internet-compatible merchant account. There are setup fees, access fees, discount fees, per-transaction fees, and monthly minimums. All those fees can sure add up fast!
Tonight’s question is: how does PayPal compare to the other big players in the e-Commerce market?
I’ll be researching this topic and the results will be posted soon.