Which Payment Gateway?

Instagram

An Ecommerce Masterclass Part 9 – Which Payment Gateway?

shopify gateway options

As our ecommerce masterclass series comes to an end, we wanted to cover something we get asked about a lot – Payment Gateway advice. It’s also something we really had to think carefully about when building our own store and luckily Shopify have a host of Payment Gateways available. These include PayPal, WorldPay, SagePay, Shopify Payments, Braintree and even BitPay. You can view the whole list here.

With so many payment gateways available, it can be difficult to decide which option to go for. So we wanted to touch upon two popular ways of taking payments that crosses people’s minds; PayPal and Shopify Payments.

PayPal Gateway

PayPal is one that everyone always mentions when launching his or her online store. It’s a popular gateway that is trusted by many and recognised around the world as a safe payment method. With a free business PayPal account you can offer PayPal as a payment option on your Shopify store in no time. Customers are merely redirected to PayPal’s website to make their payment as they checkout, then directed straight back to your store on completion. A big positive with using PayPal is the fact that every time you get an order the money goes straight into your PayPal account and can be immediately transferred into your bank account which is great for cash flow.

There’s also the option to use PayPal to take payments on your Shopify store without the customer ever leaving your website. For this however, you require a PayPal Pro account. It does incur its own costs of £20 per month and it’s worth noting it can take a few weeks to get set up. With this in mind, if you’re thinking of using PayPal Pro for your business, it’s worth creating an account well in advance of launching your store. Finally Paypal’s fees although initially higher than some other providers, do get much lower as your monthly takings break certain thresholds. So if you’re a high turnover store this may entice you.

We carefully considered using PayPal but we were certain we wanted customers to pay without being redirected, and because of the timeframe to set up a PayPal Pro account and the £20pm fees, it left us no choice but to look for another provider.

You can find our more about PayPal Pro and sign up here.

Shopify Payments

In the end we went with a payment gateway provided by Shopify called ‘Shopify Payments’ and there are a few reasons why.

Firstly due to setup speed and simplicity. You can add Shopify Payments (powered by Stripe) to your store very quickly, and there’s no need to send off any ID or speak to a representative. Simply fill out a short form and you’re ready to start taking payments online.

Using Shopify Payments also means your customers never leave your site and the full checkout process happens on your store which we feel looks much more professional. As well as this, we didn’t need to worry about creating and maintaining an account with a third party – everything is neatly in one place, and there’s no additional monthly charges, unlike the PayPal Pro platform.

The only downside to Shopify Payments is the fact that they payout all of your takings once a week in a lump sum. Each transaction is clearly detailed for you to see, but this could cause cash flow issues for stores that need to withdraw there takings as soon as possible. It’s also worth noting that as you increase your Shopify package the processing fees get lower which is a different fee structure to PayPal.

As you can see there’s a lot to consider when choosing a Payment Gateway for your online store. Hopefully the above has informed you of some key differences between two popular gateways available for you to consider but its worth looking at others too so you can find the perfect gateway for your store.

If you have any questions about payment gateways for your new store then please feel free to drop us an email at info@smartcookie-design.co.uk and one of our Shopify Experts will be happy to help.

From all the team at Smart Cookie Design



Our next
event.

No current future events. Please come back later.



Try Shopify

Thinking of starting an online store using Shopify? Click below to start your free 14 days trial.



Share this