Choosing the correct Payment Method for your store may take your sales to the next level. Next level sales means next level profits. One way to decide which payment method is best for your online store is to do research into at what point your customers are abandoning their cart. Is it when they get to the section that involves entering payment details? That might be a clue that your payment methods aren’t up to standards. There have been numerous documented times that changing even the smallest details – such as a register form button, or showing a PayPal Express Checkout button after adding a product in the cart, has resulted in a up to 50% increase in sales. Now, think of the impact that choosing the right payment methods could result in for an online retailer.
PayPal
Pros: Paypal is widely known payment service. One of the advantages of Paypal is that it has name recognition and many people trust it as a payment service. It offers multiple ways for customers to pay – Credit Card, Paypal Account, Bill Me Later. No monthly fees.
Cons: Depending on your setup, and Paypal account, users may have to leave your site to complete the payment. Paypal also provides so many different services that it’s easy to get confused about which one to set up. Settings are spread between Magento and PayPal (ex: need to enable credit cards from PayPal account), this can lead to a lot of confusion. Merchants are bound by Paypal’s buyer protection policies. The transaction fees for those with a large volume of transactions seems high.
Authorize.net
Pros: Can be integrated with mobile payments, meaning, it can accept payments via phone. Requires SSL to be used gaining your customers trust that their credit card data will be encrypted while in transmission.
Cons: Is a payment gateway, and does not include a Merchant Account. The pricing for those without a Merchant Account is: $49 one time setup fee. $25 month fee. They also take 2.9% of every transaction and .30 cents. While the pricing for those with a Merchant Account: $49 setup fee, $25 monthly fee, .10 cents per transaction and a .10 cents daily batch fee.
Amazon
Pros: Many people are also familiar with Amazon and trust it as a payment service. Already having an account on Amazon makes it easy for them to checkout.
Cons: The biggest downside to Amazon is that it uses customer data of those who use their service on your store. This literally sets Amazon up to steal your customers using the data (such as purchase, purchase amount, etc) from each purchase it processes. [[source:https://ronrule.com/2014/08/04/amazon-payments-ecommerce/ ]] Transaction fees are relatively high for those that mainly sell inexpensive products. Does not come with Magento natively and requires an extension.
Braintree Paypal
Pros: – Better rates on foreign transactions, and good if your store handles a lot of foreign transactions. They provide really good support and customer service. Less likely to impose account limits without good reason.
Cons: – Requires thorough underwriting. This could also be considered a plus, but it does not allow one to just set up an account and go. There has to be financial backing before it can be approved.
Google Wallet
Pros: – Provides a safe way to checkout that is relatively quick.
Cons: – Only available to those that have a google wallet account already. Therefore, if no google wallet account exists, the customers won’t be able to checkout with them.
Note of Community Edition Magento: One con to every payment method on Magento Community Edition is that it can’t save credit card information due to PCI Compliance – that is, unless you get a third party extension (Classy Llama for PayPal and Auth.net CIM)
How to Choose A Payment Method
The best way to choose a payment method is to see what kind of sales you have. How much volume do you have per month? Are your products mainly under say, 15-20$? Next, you’ll have to do the math. Which payment method is taking a bigger part of your margin? Which payment method would your customers most likely use? If they use primarily one payment method over another, it might be better to keep that particular payment method if it isn’t going to eat into your profits significantly more than another. Afterall, by increasing or maintaining sales, you are better off than losing revenue.
Magento Development Lead
