Speedy payments from customers – how?

By Michael Baxter on 23 June 2021 with tags E-commerce

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There are a range of times you would need a customer to make a payment. These include accepting donations, payment for services, paying a deposit and online store sales. Before looking at what options are available you need to consider some of the concepts around accepting payments:

1. All payments are done through 3^rd party providers (gateways). These providers handle the security around payments.
2. These providers will in-turn charge you some form of fee – usually a monthly fee with some form of transaction charge.
3. New Zealand based providers can connect to your own existing local bank. This minimises currency fluctuations, however, the local bank will want to charge you for having what are called “merchant services”.
4. How your money is released to you depends on each provider. Some are real-time and others need you to request it.
5. To stop fraud, a lot of providers require either a New Zealand bank account or a registered business identity.

There are many different methods by which someone can pay you. Utopia has put together the following list of standard payment gateways, along with pricing. Which of these you want to accept will also drive which gateway provider you can use:

1. Credit card (with local bank) – Windcave, ANZ eGate, Paystation
2. Credit card – eWay, Stripe, PayMate
3. Real-time bank transfer - POLi
4. Cryptocurrency
5. Pay-later – Afterpay
6. Internet wallet - PayPal

You also need to consider your customers and what type of payment methods they would be happy to use. For example, if your customers are in New Zealand they may not want to use PayPal.

Utopia has over 20 years of ecommerce experience and can assist you in integrating payments into your existing systems and workflow.  This could also include creating a new platform for taking payments as part of your own website’s customer experience. For example, selling tickets for events or receiving a deposit for services.

For assistance in selecting ecommerce and payment gateways contact Utopia today.