Choosing The Right Shopify Payment Gateway

Payments have evolved from using your credit card to these new payment providers for your online store. Choosing the correct payment gateway for your online store has been shown to be crucial to business success, with abandonment rates high for companies who have decided to opt for the wrong option. No payment provider does everything you need it to do and therefore it is crucial that a business owner weigh up the options presented to them, and choose the best accordingly for their target audience before they start selling anything.

The amount of Shopify payment gateways available for your online store is vast and therefore limiting them to a small number is difficult. A myriad of factors was taken into account to provide you with a concise list of choices to help your business.

What are Shopify payment gateways?

A payment gateway is a software that allows for payment to be processed digitally on your online store. It involves passing encrypted data between the customer’s account and the bank of the merchant.

A successful payment results in the deduction of funds from the customer’s account and then the subsequent deposit of funds into the bank account of the merchant. If a payment is rejected then the transaction will be cancelled, possibly due to insufficient funds or suspected fraudulent activities.

A Shopify payment gateway is a payment gateway that integrates with Shopify’s user interface as a content management system and e-commerce platform. Different payment gateways have different levels of integration and compatibility with Shopify, and therefore can make or break your business.

Choosing the right Shopify payment gateway

When you start selling a myriad of factors combines to determine what is the best gateway for your Shopify hosted online store. As a business owner, research is key, but some factors to consider would be: –

  • Transaction fees
  • Payment and data protection
  • Efficiency of payment
  • Level of integration

Transaction fees

Compare and contrast the transaction fees with your projected profit margins as some Shopify gateways lend themselves more to smaller businesses with a lower volume of payments.

Payment and data protection

Treating your customer’s data with care is of your utmost importance as a business. Not only can handling it incorrectly lose you sales, but it can also be illegal and get you closed down. Also, different gateways protect against fraudulent activity on different levels. Sometimes people will pay for something on an online store and then complain to their credit card company that they were scammed. It is called a chargeback which most payment providers will protect against.

Efficiency of payment

Payment processing time is incredibly important to both you as a business owner and also to the customer. Generally, anything other than instant payment processing on your online store won’t do for most modern customers who are use to just tapping their credit card at the till.

Level of integration

It’s very important to ensure that the Shopify payment gateway you are integrating has an easy-to-use user interface for your customer since they usually would use a credit card for their transactions, it has to be simple. Sometimes it’s not just what is most convenient or cheap for you as a business, it is what is best for customers to process their payment.

Credit Card Processing

What are the best Shopify payment gateways?

Again, it’s not as simple as just naming the best payment providers for Shopify and leaving it at that. Each comes with their own set of pros and cons, price tags and usability. Some of the best and more popular Shopify payment gateways are: –

  • LumiPay
  • PayPal
  • Stripe
  • Authorize.net
  • SagePay
  • Shopify Payment

LumiPay

Obviously LumiPay should top this list. If only because of the fact that LumiPay can deal with a lot most diverse type of transactions than the likes of Stripe or Amazon Pay can. So if you’re in a high-risk industry then don’t bother looking at Amazon Pay or other payment providers for your online site, LumiPay has got you covered.

We have attained Top Level PCI compliance to make sure that all of our customer’s payment information is secure as soon as they start selling. So when you start selling on your online store you can rest assured that LumiPay is the safest option you have.

When you use LumiPay you also get to work with our payment focused technical team. Their job is to optimize your gateway to make sure that it meets all of your requirements.

PayPal

With 220 million active users globally with payment accepted in 203 countries, it’s hard to not include PayPal on this list. It provides the customer with the ease of just entering their PayPal login in details to complete the transaction and it comes with a reputation that makes your business look professional.

It provides an almost complete package for processing payments for customers, linking their credit card, debit card, bank accounts and addresses all in one place.

Businesses can set up and integrate PayPal into Shopify within 24 hours and it has the option of free and paid merchant accounts. However, merchant accounts with low sales volumes may be susceptible to slightly higher than average fees.

Stripe

Stripe is fast becoming one of the biggest names in the world of e-commerce payment providers, particularly due to its integration and customisation when using Shopify.

Stripe is an extremely user-friendly product with over 200 tools to help personalise payment on your website to your specific needs. It can process repeat payments, bills and has a one-click checkout function.

No set-up fees per month are required to integrate stripe but they do charge per transaction and generally with big businesses in mind, with a staggered pricing structure depending on the location of the transaction.

Authorize.net

This is a subsidiary of Visa that allows the processing of your credit card, debits card, PayPal and Apple pay on the internet. There are a small monthly operating fee and a fee per transaction, but no setup costs.

Just like PayPal and Stripe, Authorize.net is set up with larger companies in mind.

Online Store Shopping

SagePay

With 24/7 telephone support and a flexible and cheap pricing structure depending on the number of transactions you will process, SagePay is definitely one to consider for the smaller business.

It is one of the UK and Europe’s most popular payment gateway which allows the integration of PayPal as well as all major cards.

One thing to consider is it can take up to 5 weeks to create a SagePay account, so ensure you leave yourself enough time if setting up a SagePay account so you don’t run into any surprises.

Shopify Payment

Shopify’s built-in gateway system, which effectively turns Shopify from a content management site into an e-commerce platform without the need for a third-party.

Using Shopify means that there is a 2.2% transaction fee as standard to any transaction made through their platform, which is applicable to all other payment methods. The setting up process is quick and easy and they provide a card reader which allows you to take debit and credit card payments in person, which is perfect for any business which operates an online store and in-store.

Shopify Payment is built for specific use in Shopify, making it extremely user friendly. It also has extremely good built-in fraud detection facilities.

Conclusion

The best Shopify payment gateway is definitely the one that works best for you and your business. You don’t want a potential customer to fail at the last hurdle because the payment system isn’t suitable for them or easy enough for them to use. Though it seems like we do beat all of our competitors easily because you should have no problem when you start selling using LumiPay.

All of the above Shopify payment gateways are excellent, but some suit people’s needs more than others. Any research spent learning the specifics about the operation of each one may pay dividends in the long run for your business.