Now, since you’ve reached this article, you’re probably thinking of which payment method you’ll be adding to your store. For that it’s very important to have a clear understanding of the payment methods, their availability for you as a merchant, and the main factors to consider prior to making the choice.
Below is a list of the main factors you’d want to consider:
If you’re selling locally you may want to consider offering Cash On Delivery (COD) as an offline payment method. It is fast, easy to use and configure we highly recommend it!
” More than 75% of online shoppers prefer to buy via COD on their 1st purchase from an online store! ”
Then, of course it is recommended to have an online payment method. After all you’re online for a reason. As your store grows, you’d want to start selling internationally, and offer multiple payment options for your customers to choose from. The best combination is having one offline option to start with and later on add one or two online payment methods.
Keep in mind that you can always go for one of the options and add more as you go.
This may sound a little bit technical, here is what it means:
The Base Currency is the currency you want to process transactions with.
Some online payment gateways have restrictions on what currency they accept as the base currency for the store.
For example: PayPal restricts the base currency to USD only, Faturah restricts it to SAR, as for PayTabsand PayFort they accept more than one currency including AED, USD, SAR, KWD (Payfort), BHD(Paytabs), but some other payment gateways accept almost all currencies such as Checkout.com.
These are only to give you a better idea about of the available payment gateways, but of course there are many other options to use too.
Apart from the Base Currency, there is the Display Currency of the store. Customers see and deal with the Display Currency on the front-end of your website. Thus, even if PayPal restricts you with using USD as the Base Currency, you can still display a T-shirt on your store with a different display currency, in JOD for instance.
In short, you can have a different display currency from the base currency, the system will do the conversion automatically and show the price according to the display currency your customer selects.
This factor is actually related to the online payment gateways, your country of operation is the country in which you operate and sell from, which means that you need to open an account with a payment gateway that operates in the same country.
As you read through the payment articles, give attention to the header of the article as it’ll tell you what country the payment gateway needs you to be registered in. The header message looks like the following:
My company is registered in: GCC, Levant, others
Most payment gateways, require a trade license to open an account with them. If you do not have one at the time of launching your store, it’s alright, there won’t be a need to pause the work. You can always start with COD (which is another good reason why we highly recommend it first), or go with Paypal (They don’t request one as you begin, but if they see a grow in your transactions, they will later on ask for one).
The above four factors are the main kick starting points to help you with your choice and decision. Happy Selling!
By the end of this article, you should be able to identify which of these main factors are mandatory for your choice of the payment method. The rest of the articles in this section are specific for each payment method available and that can be integrated with ShopGo. Your On Boarding Specialist should help you further during the Payment & Shipping Call (if your package offers it).