As the number of small businesses begins to rise, the plethora of payment processing solutions has also risen sporadically to provide unique payment services to these businesses. For many small businesses, particularly those new to the bustling world of payment processors, it can be difficult to choose the right payment processing solution that ticks all their requirements. In this article, we discuss 5 best payment processing solutions for small businesses in 2024 by highlighting standout features like pricing, accessibility, security, and suitability.
What is a Payment Gateway?
A payment gateway refers to an advanced platform that acts as a middleman during financial translations inviting a merchant and a customer. This simple technology allows both physical and online businesses to accept, process, and also manage several payment methods, which may include debit cards, digital wallets, credit cards, and cryptocurrency wallets securely and efficiently. It saves small business owners the stress of overseeing transactions between customers and the respective financial institutions.
What features make the best payment gateway?
A payment gateway is considered to be good or efficient if it allows for the safe and secure transaction of every customer. The following are some other important features that make a payment gateway perfect for a small business:
Data Protection
For business owners, the key condition to choosing a payment gateway may be speed, wide acceptance, or low chargeback fees. But for your customers all around the world, their data privacy is of utmost importance to them. A good payment gateway must endeavor to protect the financial information of each customer. When a customer submits their card or enters their card details during a checkout, the payment gateway must encrypt these data to protect it from theft and unauthorized access as it executes a transaction between the customer’s device, their respective financial institutions, and the merchant’s server.
Data reporting
Many payment gateway provide merchants and customers with valuable data that contains their transaction details to help them analyze their spending. In many cases, these details entail the amount of product purchased, type of product, payment method, date/time, and merchant name. Many payment gateways are now incorporating additional points like refund management and discounts to help both businesses and customers identify trends and improve their operations.
Security
The rising cases of online card theft have allowed for improved security techniques that protect customers and merchants. To minimize fraud occurrences and encourage early fraud detection, payment gateways employ high-tech security measures which may include fraud detection software and AI and Card Verification Value (CVV) check-ins. These authentication measures help crack down on spam accounts or potentially fraudulent transactions before any payment is approved.
Multi-Currency Support
To expand theft reach outside of their country, many payment processors offer multiple currencies and digital currencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. This feature allows customers from difficult countries to pay merchants in their local currencies (which is often equivalent to the product’s price in the merchant’s currency) without worrying about cross-border difficulties.
Quick Setup
Small business merchants are already overwhelmed on numerous things such as setting up their stores and getting customers. A good payment processor helps cut out extra worries by offering a quick setup process so that business owners can be up and running almost immediately.
Affordable chargeback fees
The chargeback fees is of top priority to whether small business owners as a majority tend to look for payment processing solutions with little to no fee rate. Business merchants must understand that certain processors require several fee types which may include setup fees, transaction fees, refund fees, chargeback fees, and monthly fees. To help business owners, some processors offer pricing models of different tiers such as flat, tiered, or interchange-plus.
5 Best Payment Processing Solutions for Small Businesses (2024)
There are over 300 payment processing solutions all around the world, promising different kinds of services to small businesses. This section highlights 5 of the best payment processing solutions business owners can trust and incorporate in their online store.
PTPShopy
PTPshopy is a cryptocurrency payment gateway that offers a variety of benefits for small businesses. It supports multiple cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, and BRC-20 tokens, which allows customers to pay with any coin or token of their choice, attracting more customers and increasing sales. When it comes to transaction and chargeback fees, PTPShopy has low transaction fees of only 0.99%, with no hidden fees or withdrawal fees. This allows businesses of all kinds to save more money and earn profits.
It has a high level of security and compliance, as it follows the PCI standards, similar to well-secured payment processing solutions, and incorporates encryption and fraud prevention measures to protect every customer’s transactions. PTPshopy has a flexible and easy integration process as it offers merchants well-designed documentation and numerous tools for different types of businesses, such as API, plugins, PoS, payment links, donation buttons, and crowdfunding platforms.
PTPShopy also has a generous affiliate/referral program, which allows users to earn recurring income whenever they promote PTPshopy to other merchants and customers. Overall, this payment gateway processor is committed to providing a user-friendly, cost-effective, and feature-rich solution to businesses looking to adopt cryptocurrency as a form of payment.
Stripe
For many small businesses, Stripe is a top consideration as it is one of the most popular and effective. It ticks the box for features many small merchants require and it is highly customizable to accommodate businesses of all kinds. Stripe is perfect for small fast-growing businesses that engage in recurring online transactions. It is secured and even offers PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliance for free accounts. However, transaction fees can be competitive to some business types as Stripe is known for its unfavorable chargeback fees, hardware purchasing option, and add-on payment processing cost.
Square
Square Payments is another popular payment processing solution as it allows customers to pay in several ways including through Apple Pay, Gpay, Android Pay, Credit Cards, and all other payment forms. Small businesses can also generate invoices for customers and are guaranteed to receive their payments directly to their bank accounts within a day or two. Although there are more expensive processing solutions, Square Payment fees are regarded as high among many business owners and they are also known for freezing accounts after some months of inactivity.
Clover
Clover is a versatile payment gateway that caters to businesses of all sides and offers numerous features including credit card processing, and POS solutions. And secure credit card payments. It offers a seamless shopping experience for customers and allows merchants to customize their payment page to match their branding or logo.
PayPal
PayPal is undoubtedly one of the leading payment processing solutions that allows businesses to accept credit cards, PayPal Credit, and PayPal payments. It is customizable and provides an optimized web and mobile checkout experience. Although it has one of the most expensive chargeback fees, it remains a payment solution that supports shopping cart integration and offers a variety of payment options.