Updated on 19 November 2023

Best Payment Platforms

As society and technology evolve, payment platforms evolve with them. Check out this article to find the best payment gateways you can use today!

The Logician

Trademark of a Living Legend

Updated on 19 November 2023

Navigating the Landscape of Modern Payment Platforms

The 2021 E-commerce in Europe report states that 297 million consumers shop online, and they have spent approximately $492 on online shopping. Therefore, you must be aware of the best payment methods nowadays and include them all.

Choosing the best payment methods will change your game. It will help you take your sales to the next level, and this contributes to next-level revenues. Also, by including all of the best payment methods, you will ensure that your potential customers won’t abandon checkout because their preferred method is not available.

So, in order to provide the best customer experience and secure your sales, I recommend we delve into my detailed payment methods review. I will help you understand what payment methods are, how to choose the best one, what features to consider, why you should use them, and how they work.

So, let’s get down to business!

What are Payment Methods?

A payment method is the option you choose for paying when buying a particular product or service. No matter whether you shop in a brick-and-mortar store or online, you will encounter a wide range of payment methods (at least you should). Some of the most frequent and well-known among consumers are:

Cash
Credit cards
Debit cards
Gift cards
Bank transfers
Mobile payments
PayPal
Online wallets
Cryptocurrencies

The main aspect all people rely on is the convenience of the payment method. In other words, they choose what they believe will provide them with a secure and seamless transaction with the buyer.

Tip

Always keep an eye on options that may not be so popular but are commonly used among your target audience. This will help you decrease the fuss and disappointment during checkout.

Billing Cycle

A billing cycle or billing period represents the period between the billing statements. Usually, this period lasts one month, but you can set it according to your business needs.

Note

The optimal length of the billing cycle is somewhere between 20 and 45 days.

Another thing you must keep in mind is that when recurring payments, you can set an automatic or manual process.

With automated payment collection, your customers select the payment method that suits them most, and they are auto-charged when the billing cycle renews. With manual payments, you collect dues and record them by yourself.

However, as technology and the world evolve, payment methods change too. That’s why the need for understanding and implementing modern payment methods increases drastically and can also enhance your SEO besides sales.

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As I always want to keep up with the latest trends and ensure that my visitors are also up-to-date with the latest developments, I decided to help you understand the process of choosing a payment method. So, are you ready to learn more?

How to Choose the Best Project Management Tool?

When selecting the right payment methods for your business, you need to take a few factors into account. Trust me, this is a more complex process than it seems, as you must thoroughly research your customers’ needs, demographics, and availability of your payment method.

Warning

Not all payment methods work overseas and for all businesses.

However, I put together some of the most vital aspects that e-commerce owners from all over the world follow and implement. So, let’s get into more detail!

Location: The geographical location of your business and your target audience play a crucial role in choosing the right payment method. This is important because you need to know which payment methods are available in the region of your target audience and whether your business location enables its implementation.
Business Model: You must consider your business type and the particular needs of your consumers. So, it’s really essential whether you have an e-commerce platform, subscription-based service, or a traditional brick-and-mortar store. For example, subscription-based businesses, such as web hosting, work best with automatic payments, while e-commerce platforms must provide secure online payment gateways for a straightforward checkout.

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Purchase Method: This refers to whether your transactions are conducted in-store, online, or maybe a combination of both. In other words, online businesses are mainly focused on digital transactions, while traditional stores go for the combination model (if they have an online store). However, this will help you look for a payment method that will satisfy your needs.
Features: One of the most important aspects is the features. If you go for a payment method that lacks some crucial features, you won’t provide your consumers with the best experience. Therefore, you need to search for a payment method with a prebuilt payment form, UI components, payment links, invoicing, and accepting different payment options.
Security and Compliance: When selecting your payment method, you must do detailed research and ensure that your preferred option is safe and adheres to industry standards and regulations. This is important in order to provide secure transactions, as well as to protect your and your customer’s confidential data.
Scalability: As with all businesses, your goal must be to grow. Therefore, look for a payment method that will support you in your beginnings but also when your customer pool expands. In other words, you must find a scalable payment method that will be enough for the numerous transactions.
Third-Party Integration: According to your business model, you may have integrated more tools on your platform in order to provide a better user experience. For instance, you probably implemented your website builder for fast adjustments, marketing campaigns, project management tools for easier communication, etc. That’s why you need a payment method that lets you connect it to all of these tools so your customers can create transactions only from one place.

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Pricing: Another thing you must consider is the price of your payment method. This includes the subscription for the tool, service fees, and transaction fees. Due to this, try to find a payment method that will be within your budget and also have low transaction fees so your customers don’t pay additional charges.
Ease of Use: Your chosen payment method must be easy to use and understand. If you go for a service that has a complex setup process and confusing platform, you may face issues and not provide the best experience for your users.
Support: This plays an important role in your decision. In case a problem arises, you must be able to contact your payment method support team at any time and via various channels, such as a live chat, email, phone, knowledge base, FAQs, forums, how-to guides, tutorials, etc. But the quality of the support is also crucial. That’s why always go for 24/7 available support that is also knowledgeable and can solve your issues.

Reputation: The best way to check the reputation of your preferred payment method is to either test it or read different reviews. Also, the longer the payment method is satisfying other business owners, the better the reputation. As a result, you will get the best payment method and enjoy its excellent reputation perks.

Note

I always suggest reading customers and expert payment methods reviews, especially from individuals with the same business type as yours. This will help you get better and more reliable insights.

Top Features to Look for In a Payment Method – The Logician’s Insights

The term features when speaking about payment methods may confuse you. However, modern payment methods need to come with numerous features that will enhance your business appearance. This contributes to satisfying your customers’ needs and providing them with the best possible checkout experience.

That’s why I decided to highlight some of the features I find most crucial in payment methods. So, let’s have a better look!

Warning

You don’t need to focus only on these features. This is just a small part of what most payment methods offer. If you are looking for some particular elements, you can certainly look for them too.

Prebuilt Payment Form: This feature acts similarly to a website builder. It is basically a platform that makes the whole transaction process easier by offering prebuilt elements and templates. As a result, you will be able to customize the checkout according to your business needs and target audience.

Tip

It allows you to either embed the checkout directly on your online store or just put it as a link to the official page of your chosen payment method.

User Interface Components: Tightly related to the previous feature are the user interface components. Such a feature will let you tailor a payment form for your site. Additionally, you will be able to minimize user error, increase the number of successful payments, and optimize your revenue.
Payment Links: You can utilize this feature for more purposes. For example, payment links are helpful if you want to sell a product or service, accept a donation, or start a subscription. The best part is that most of the payment methods allow you to develop a payment link without any coding knowledge.

Important

You can share the payment link via email or publish it on a social media post. You can also put it directly on your business site.

Invoicing: This is a useful feature for making larger transactions or paying to another client or business. More precisely, the invoicing will enable you to send invoices and request payments from your customers. What’s better, you can even create custom invoices that will match your brand, add payment terms, and accept different types of payments.
Payment Options: Although we’re talking about payment methods, they act more like platforms that allow you to streamline the checkout process. Due to this, you need to find a payment method that will accept various payment options, such as cards, wallets, bank transfers, bank redirects, buy now, pay later, cash-based vouchers, real-time payments, currencies, etc.

Warning

Not all payment methods accept all of these options but try to select the tool that will work with at least the most commonly used ones.

Benefits of Payment Methods

As I am more focused on helping you find a modern solution for your business, I decided to share with you the greatest benefits of the payment methods. So, now that you know how to choose the most suitable one and what features to consider, it’s time to understand why all of that is important!

Note

These are the most significant benefits. Of course, there are a few others that will contribute to a perfect checkout process and a lot of satisfied customers.

Satisfying Your Consumers’ Needs

Imagine you open an e-commerce website and find your preferred product and service. Unfortunately, you can’t purchase it because the online store lacks the payment option you want to use. This will only make your potential customers exit your site and never come back. Luckily, you can prevent this.

One of the benefits that modern payment methods offer is that they come with a wide range of payment options, which means you can basically find any payment method you prefer. Starting from credit cards to bank transfers to online wallets to cryptocurrencies, you can have it all from a single tool.

That’s why I advise you to carefully select a payment method that has a simple payment collection service for instant, invoice, and recurring payments.

Note

Most platforms automate all of the payment processes, which reduces the need for manual configuring.

Cutting Payment Costs

One of the biggest issues for businesses, especially startups, is the additional fees you need to pay after building your website. So, if you are on a tight budget, a modern payment method is the perfect choice for you.

They are relatively cheap, don’t include high additional costs, and still work impressively well. But besides the fact that you will save money, your consumers will, too. This is because payment method platforms have low or no transactional fees.

More Flexibility

As we are living in a fast-paced world in which technology and new developments are part of our everyday lives, we must adapt to them. Therefore, you can start by implementing modern solutions in your business that will give you more flexibility.

Your consumers are often busy and don’t have time to run to banks for bigger transactions. Here is where payment methods also help. Thanks to them, you can change the transaction amount, the collection date, and the frequency without even needing authorization from your client.

Note

All you need is to make a deal that will appeal to you and your customer the most.

Timely Payments

Another thing that frustrates business owners, as well as customers, is the payment delay. Suppose you need to wait for authorization to collect your money in case of a subscription. The payment process will become one big chaos.

Luckily, with modern payment methods, you can ensure that you’ll avoid delayed payments by setting an automated payment. More precisely, this lets you pull all of your payments with just one authorization from your consumers in the beginning. Once you set this up, you will immediately receive all the payments on your account.

Tip

In order to have better insights, I advise you to set a fixed payment date for all of your clients.

Saving Valuable Time

Running a website is a pretty needy website. You need to be aware of what happens at all times. While there are project management tools that will help you centralize all of the work-related processes, you can also achieve this with your payments.

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Imagine you need to learn how the whole payment system works. This is a pretty lengthy and complex process, which will cost you a lot of time. But what if I tell you that around 10-15% of the card payments fail, and you should be the one that solves the issue through your online store?

Payment methods are the way to go if you want to avoid all of this. This is because the bigger part of the payments are successfully collected even on the first try, which enhances the cash flow and also reduces manual interventions from you or freelancer programmers.

As a result, you can spend more time on other crucial aspects of your business while at the same time satisfying your consumers.

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How Do Modern Payment Methods Work?

While payment methods are a popular topic in the tech industry, it’s also important to understand how they work. Luckily, you don’t need to have any coding knowledge in order to set them up and implement them in your business. They work pretty simple.

Warning

The process may slightly differ in one or two additional steps depending on the payment method you choose. Below, you can find the general process.

The process starts when you decide to buy a product or a service. Once you proceed to checkout, the payment method immediately sends your customers a request for payment. Then, they need to enter their transaction details according to the payment type they choose (credit card, bank account, cryptocurrency, etc.).

Once your clients finish with that, the payment method collects your consumers’ funds. After that, they proceed to your bank account, from where you can leave them or take them out in cash.

Warning

Although the payments are immediately available on the payment method account, you can wait 2-5 days to receive them in your bank account.

However, if you want to avoid the wait, some platforms offer you to get a credit card from the payment method and withdraw them at an ATM as soon as they are on the payment platform.

What’s more, some payment methods platforms come with the possibility that you can send payments to another client or business that uses the same platform. This sending process usually doesn’t come with additional charges.

Note

If the other party does not have a payment method account and you need to make a bank transfer, you are eligible to pay a transactional fee.

Conclusion

Opening a business and developing a website might be tough, but there are a lot of other extras you need to take care of, such as payment methods. While you may include all the essential ones, such as PayPal, credit and debit cards, bank transfers, and cryptocurrencies, the rapid technological advancement imposes new developments.

One of those developments is payment methods that help you enhance your transactional processes and the checkout of your customers. In other words, these platforms come with all payment options in one place, secure the transactions, have lower fees (or not at all), and save you valuable time and money.

All of this contributes to a better business appearance, more page traffic and sales, and higher profits.

So, if you want to improve your business and streamline your payment processes, choosing the best payment method is definitely your starting point. I hope my review helps you!

Frequently Asked Questions

Your online store should include most of the traditional payment methods. More precisely, you need to have credit cards, debit cards, PayPal, bank transfers, cryptocurrencies, mobile payments, Google Payments, Amazon Payment, Apple Payment, etc. Due to this, your customers can choose the method that suits them the most.

Payment method refers to the way in which your customers will pay for your services or products or the way in which you collect the funds. Thanks to the huge range of payment methods, they can be online, in-store, or a combination of both.

Payment methods proceed with the funds from your customers to your bank account. More precisely, the consumers enter their transaction details, then the funds arrive at the payment method platform, and after a few days, they are finally available in your bank account. However, you can withdraw them at the moment when they arrive on the platform only if you have the respective debit card.

The traditional payment methods are credit cards, debit cards, PayPal, bank transfers, cheques, online wallets, cryptocurrencies, wire transfers, mobile payments, cash, Buy Now, Pay Later, and many more. However, these are the most commonly used ones.

Modern payment methods are Payoneer, Stripe, Wise, and Mercury. They are payment platforms on which you can find the traditional payment methods in one place. The only difference is that they come with lower fees and automate most of the payment procedures.

The best payment method for a global audience is Payoneer. This is because it comes with financial services that are available for different businesses, includes all necessary payment options, has no transaction fees for Payoneer users, and integrates with many other services. Due to this, you can expand your business on an international level and provide an excellent experience.

Stripe comes with the most features. More precisely, this modern payment method integrates with other apps, has secure financial transactions, is easy to use, encrypts transactions, and supports all traditional payment methods. This contributes to next-level experiences and a drastically streamlined payment process.

No, you can’t enhance your business appearance only with a payment method. However, it plays a significant role in the process. The main reason for this is that modern payment methods incorporate all essential payment options, which cater to the needs of your consumers. Also, all of your processes are automated, and the transactions are usually accepted on the first try.

While it’s pretty hard to say that one payment method is the best, I would recommend checking out Stripe, Wise, Payoneer, and Mercury. All of these payment methods come with unique features, secure transactions, and help you achieve higher profits. Keep in mind that each of these platforms is suitable for a different business type or size.

Payment methods first require your customers to enter their transaction details and choose the preferred payment option. After that, they store the funds on the platform, and after 2-5 days, the payment method sends the funds to your bank account. This ensures a safe and successful transaction process.

Yes, you can integrate the payment method directly on your website. This is possible because most of the payment methods allow third-party integrations and work with other apps. As a result, you can benefit from a more streamlined process within your website, for example. Ultimately, this improves your customers’, as well as your experience.

Payment links are URLs, buttons, or even QR codes that take your customers to the checkout on your online store. This helps them complete a purchase only after they’ve chosen your product or service via social media or email. The best part is that you can implement a payment link anywhere.

No, payment methods don’t come with transaction fees. If you want to transfer money within the platform, you won’t pay additional charges. However, if you’re going to send money to another business via a bank transfer, you need to pay expenses, not to the payment method but to the bank.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What Payment Methods Should My Online Store Include?

What Does a Payment Method Mean?

How Do Payment Methods Work?

What are the Traditional Payment Methods?

What are the Modern Payment Methods?

Which Payment Method is Best for the Global Audience?

Which Payment Method Comes with the Most Features?

Can I Enhance My Business Appearance Only with a Payment Method?

What is the Best Payment Method?

How Do Payment Methods Proceed the Transactions?

Can I Integrate the Payment Method Directly On My Website?

What Are Payment Links?

Do Payment Methods Come with Transaction Fees?

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