How to accept online payments securely this Christmas
Parents are busy people these days and sometimes the only way for them to get things is by shopping online. This is why online toy shops have been cropping up all over the place. It’s no longer enough to just own a store on the high street, it appears to be the right move to take your toy shop online; if you’re competitors are doing it then it’s probably a good indication that you should be to. So, how do you accept online payments?
However, putting your toy shop online takes a bit of setting up, whether you’re doing it yourself or hiring a professional web developer to do it for you. Not only do you have to design it and make sure it all works properly, you then have to market it and make sure you’re getting enough internet traffic. So when it comes to setting up how people pay for their goods from your online toy shop, you need to make sure you’ve got this set up properly too.
Payments
There is no point in having a fantastic looking online toy shop, with all the flashy bits and pieces and all the stock that any parent could want if you’re just going to make it hard for them to pay; or worse still, unsecure.
The primary payment methods for most online stores is now debit and credit cards, and you can’t accept them if you don’t have a merchant account with a payment processing company or your bank. Having a merchant account will allow you to accept debit and credit card payments quickly and easily through a card terminal or through a virtual terminal. Having an online toy shop will require you to use a virtual terminal however, since your customers are not present to physically enter their card and details.
A virtual terminal
A virtual terminal simply requires you to take your customer’s card details and enter them manually into your card terminal. This is a perfect way of accepting card payments without having your customer present. Card payments are the way forward and since everyone wants to use their debtit cards these days, having a virtual terminal seems to be the logical answer rather than accepting long winded and unreliable cheques.
However having a virtual terminal does require someone to be there to enter the details and process the payment; therefore, your customers will not always get instant confirmation of their purchase, usually only a confirmation email that they’ve submitted their payment.
Using a payment gateway
A payment gateway is just as effective as a virtual terminal and it’s much easier, and much more secure. A payment gateway will do everything for you and also keep your customer’s details private and secure all the time. A payment gateway sends all card details to your payment processor and to the customers issuing bank via a secure SSL connection that prevents anyone else being able to access them.
You should be able to get a payment gateway from your payment processor, or at least from a company they partner with. Be sure to ask your payment processor about e-commerce when you apply for your merchant account.
To find out more about how we can help your business:
