# Development

Steps for Integrating a Payment Gateway Into Your Website

Red Rocket teamSep 16, 20246 min read

Obviously, the goal of any business enterprise is to make a profit and grow. Sometimes, business owners can't understand why the number of customers decreases compared to their previous expectations. Actually, the reason may not be hidden in marketing, management or the cost of products. Customers often refuse to buy because of the lack of comfortable payment methods on the website. That's why we recommend you pay close attention to the payment methods on your website (if you already have them). If you haven't installed them yet, you should learn more about how to integrate payment gateway into website.

In order to emphasize the importance of payment systems for customers, we have prepared a small statistic for you. According to our data, about 20% of customers leave products lying in the cart because they experienced difficulties with the final stage - payment on the website. At the same time, half of them don't find a payment method that suits them, and the other half encounter a complicated interface during payment. Now just imagine how much net profit these 20% of potential customers could bring you. We are here to tell you how to build a website that accepts payments and implement a payment system on your existing online platform.

Key Takeaways

Any commercial website needs a reliable payment gateway. It allows you to process customer transactions and ensure that funds are transferred to your company account.
There are many out-of-the-box payment gateway solutions available today, including PayPal, Amazon Payments, Wise, and others.
Different payment gateway providers offer different terms for the amount of initial fees and commissions on each transaction.
By having your own payment gateway developed from scratch, you have more options. However, developing such a system from scratch can cost more than 100 thousand dollars.

Payment Gateway – What Is It?

Before we move on to a detailed review of payment gateway, we suggest you start by defining the term and understanding how it all works in real life. So, what is a payment gateway for websites?

In simple words, a payment gateway for websites is a kind of intermediary between websites, payment processors, and banks. They pass information about customer transactions to the payment processors to get approval from the banks and provide this information to the end customer on the website. Of course, to the average user, a payment gateway is something invisible and many people have no idea how it all works at all. This technology also acts as a guarantor, protecting the client's funds. Encryption, 3D Secure technology, and much more are used for this purpose. Customers don't have to worry about the funds that are stored on their credit or debit cards.

As we said above, customers don't see this payment gateway, and many don't realize how the money from their accounts is transferred to the website. In fact, there is a certain algorithm that makes payment gateway technology work successfully. Here's what it looks like:

It all starts with the customer visiting the site and finding a product he is interested in. Then he sends this product to the customer's shopping cart and clicks the buy button.

The next step for the customer is to fill in the required fields for details and CVV code. Browsers encrypt such information so that fraudsters do not get hold of users' details.

Next, the merchant collects the received information and sends it to the payment gateway.

When the data reaches the gateway, it, in turn, quickly delivers this information to payment processors (banks).

The bank decides whether to process the transaction or not, based on its own security algorithms. After that, the bank sends a return message that contains the status of the transaction - approved or rejected.

When the payment gateway receives the response from the bank, it delivers this information to the website. In this way, the customer can see whether his transaction was successful or not.

After reading how a payment gateway works, you may think that this whole process takes too much time. However, this is not the case at all. The time it will take for all these steps usually takes about 3 seconds. Moreover, if you have ever shopped on a website online, you might have noticed one interesting thing. The message from mobile banking about the charge usually arrives before the merchant's website displays this information.

Popular Payment Gateway Options

Many things can depend on which payment gateway you choose. We have already mentioned that a part of customers refuse to buy if they experience any difficulties with this process. Some people may even think that there are scammers in front of them if the site offers a payment method that is not typical. This is why you should take enough time to choose the perfect payment gateway. Today, there are many well-known players in this industry that are characterized by reliability and security.

PayPal

Of course, PayPal's solution holds first place in our list of payment gateways. It is necessary to note that PayPal is among the most recognized payment processors available online. It enables customers to make secure payments on websites using PayPal balance, bank account, or credit/debit cards like Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover.

What about charges? PayPal charges industry-average fees - 2.4-3.4% + $0.30 for each transaction. No monthly fees and setup costs are required. PayPal provides the best security features such as 128 bit encryption and two factor authentication. It offers purchase protection and fraud protection for transactions to ensure security. An added advantage is that customers are able to easily handle subscription and recurring payments with PayPal. All in all, PayPal is secure and comparatively cheap for most online stores.

Amazon Pay

Amazon Pay benefits from this massive customer base and enables faster checkouts with information stored on the Amazon account. Credit/debit, gift cards, and account balances are some of the options as to how the payment can be made.

Amazon Pay offers attractive and quite affordable prices that start at 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction, with no monthly fees. It benefits from Amazon’s high-security measures and encryption to ensure safe transactions. Another distinct feature is the ability to make payments in installments, especially when a customer is making a large purchase. Thus, Amazon Pay is definitely worth it, especially given that you would require an Amazon business account to accept payments anyway.

SagePay

SagePay is a European payment gateway company that aims to provide secure and reliable payment solutions. It accepts Visa, MasterCard, Amex, bank transfers, and other payment options. SagePay's fee structure differs significantly from PayPal and Amazon Pay. Unlike those solutions, SagePay does not charge per-transaction fees. Instead, they offer monthly pricing plans that are priced directly based on the number and volume of transactions. For example, the most affordable subscription starts at $20 per month. They have strong security features such as PCI, SSL/TLS encryption, fraud filter, and account verification.

How to Prepare Your Website for Integration?

Do you remember the time when businesses received payment from customers by manually transferring funds from one card to another? Many things have changed since then, and today, you can make transactions faster and easier. However, to implement a payment system on your online platform, you must prepare in advance. The first point you should start preparing is to check your website. Look at the pages where you offer products or services. Make sure that all the cards are set up in the right way. Pay attention to the prices that are spelled out in the cards. If the price is not correct, the customer may place an order and the system will automatically deduct the irrelevant amount.

Next, you should make sure that your site runs like a Swiss watch. This means that all processes are set up correctly and you are ready to accept orders, including payment through payment gateways. We also recommend talking to partners who have already implemented a payment gateway. They can show you in real-time what it looks like from the company's side.

Step-by-step Guide to Integrating a Payment Gateway

Now you know more information about payment gateways and how they work for a successful transaction. It's time to learn how to integrate payment gateway in website by reading our 5-step guide.

(01)

Understand what payment gateway you need. The first is to decide which payment gateway is best suited to your needs: general needs, preferred payment types, and geographic location. For example, small businesses can use options like Stripe and PayPal, while Authorize.Net is more effective in large business organizations. Some other factors that should also be considered when selecting a service include fees, ease of integration, security, and other developer facilities.
(02)

Create a merchant account profile. The next step is to open a merchant account using the selected payment service. This includes entering information about your business, agreeing to their terms and policies, and inputting tax data. Depending on your risk evaluation, the gateway will advise on your merchant account charges and the cost of processing each transaction.
(03)

Get API data. To implement the gateway on your site, you require API access credentials such as REST API keys, authentication tokens, etc. These enable the gateway to interface with your systems for payment data exchange. If you decide to use client-side integration, get the public API key. If you decide to use server-side integration, get the private API key.
(04)

Add HTML code to the website. When you've created a business account on the service and started collaborating, you need to get down to the technical details. This means that you have to add HTML code to the interface on your website. The provider will give HTML code, JavaScript library files, CSS code, etc., which you must embed in your web files. This allows adaptive checkout forms, «buy now» buttons, subscription control, and another hosted payment page on your site. Place these codes properly in your payment processing web pages. Inspect every detail locally before actually putting it online.
(05)

Track payment processing. When you are done with the process of integrating ecommerce into website, you have to keep working. What are we talking about? The final process is to track payment processing. This can be done by observing the reports generated in the merchant account in real-time. It is good to assess the number of successful and failed transactions, whether they have been reconciled, chargeback rate, payment velocity, and refund rate, among other things.

Payment Gateway From Scratch or a Ready-made Solution?

The drawback of using payment gateways of other vendors is the need to give a part of the amount from the transaction. As practice shows, business owners give about 2% of each transaction to the technology provider. Some payment gateways offer other payment structures, charging a fixed amount per month.

So, you might have had the idea to set up your own payment gateway. Of course, no one limits you, and you can theoretically implement this. By having your own payment gateway, you won't have to deduct a portion of the transaction. You will also be able to customize all the security measures yourself and prepare this system based on your own needs and goals.

However, is it worth creating a payment gateway from scratch instead of using ready-made solutions? You should realize that developing your own gateway is a complex task that will take a lot of time and, most importantly, money. Such a solution can cost you about 100 thousand dollars. That's why most business owners decide to use payment gateways from other providers instead of creating their own.

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Final Thoughts

You may have created a website you and your users love by implementing modern web design, innovative features, and clear navigation. However, if you've done a poor job on the payment stage, all of this can undo all your past efforts. It sounds cruel and unfair, but this is a business, and you have to be prepared for all scenarios. The most important thing you should realize is that your potential customers can be different. Sure, you do your research beforehand and know your target audience (their age, gender, country of residence, and other data). However, you can't know what payment method they prefer or how well they navigate websites. This means that the page and payment process on your online platform should be designed in such a way that any customer understands what to do. Use only clear and easy-to-understand buttons, and provide additional information on each payment method. You must implement a payment gateway so that the customer's money for the product can be redirected to your bank account. A payment gateway allows you to process online payments quickly and easily. Remember the importance of security, so take the time to choose the right gateway.