Online payment portals have become necessary as customers prefer to prepay for most orders. Now customers use credit cards, bank transfers, and e-wallets to make online and hassle-free payments. Therefore, it is vital to offer multiple online payment portals to maintain a high conversion rate. However, these portals must be secure to protect your customer’s most confidential information.
Suppose your chosen payment portal company is not safe. In that case, your customers can become victims of online fraud, significantly as recently 40,000 Thai citizens fell victim to online banking cyber fraud.
However, this is not the only reason you must invest in a safe and secure payment portal. See all the reasons why your ecommerce business can’t thrive without one.
What Is Payment Gateway?
A payment gateway or portal is a transactional channel between an ecommerce store and banks to support online customers’ credit/debit cards, bank transfers, or e-wallet payments. Without an online payment option, you have to physically collect payment from your customers through the cash on delivery (COD) option.
Payment portals are used to support the money transaction between your customers and your store. However, they require approval from the online buyer to process the money transfer. If the customer does not approve the transaction, you won’t receive money because your ecommerce system will not place the order.
Why Is Secure Payment Portal Important?
The only reason people shop online is that it is convenient for them. They can easily shop online without spending all the time required by traditional shopping.
So, they want to select an item and pay for it quickly. An online gateway allows customers to choose the payment method that is most convenient for them. If online buyers can’t select a suitable option, they cancel their order and shop from another online merchant.
Moreover, when customers know that your online portals are secure, they shop from you without worrying they will fall prey to customer data breaches, extortion, and other security issues in the future.
Benefits of Using Secure Online Payment Portals
Offering online payment is equally beneficial for big and small businesses because it makes it easier to cater to the different payment demands of every customer. That is why a secure payment portal helps you:
Reduce Online Banking Fraud
Payment gateways hold the most confidential information of every customer shopping from your ecommerce platform. Therefore, you need to ascertain that your appointed payment gateway is protected with high endurance firewalls. When payment portal stores your customer’s bank/credit/debit card information on its cloud server, if hacked, hackers use this information to buy goods for themselves.
But a well-protected payment portal has unique security features that ensure that customers are safe during and after the payment process is completed.
Improve Customer Experience
Most people shop from ecommerce stores for the comfort and ease they provide. This is why customers abandon their carts if they don’t find their preferred payment portal. This drawback turns their shopping experience into a hassle.
Therefore, you need to ensure your customers pick their favorite payment option and complete their purchase. Additionally, if you are not offering multiple payment options, your customer may turn to the competitor’s store providing these options.
Save Time Through Seamless Site Navigation
During the payment process, customers have to navigate through multiple pages. This is a burden because buyers want to complete their purchase quickly and move on to other tasks. If order confirmation takes too long, it results in cart abandonment.
That is why buyers love online portals that do not direct them to multiple pages. The payment information is already saved, so they only have to click once to place and pay for the order, saving time spent on multiple-page navigation.
No Area Restriction
If your ecommerce store serves more than one area, only offering a cash on delivery (COD) option is a drawback that results in reduced sales. But if you provide an online payment option, all your customers pay in advance, and you also don’t have to wait for the payment.
This is highly advantageous for businesses that also provide services on the international level because they receive payments without any worry.
Lower Declined Delivery Ratio
As an ecommerce store owner, you must be well-acquainted with refused parcels. When customers have to wait for a COD parcel, they often change their minds. They realize that they might not need this product. However, if they have prepaid for the items, they do not cancel the order because it would take more time for their payment to refund.
So, using online payment would reduce the waste of your money and resources while ensuring your sales don’t lower.
Easy Installation and Maintenance
Online payment portals are easy to install and maintain because they do not require regular checkups. That is why they are not expensive to keep their high functioning. Additionally, establishing an online payment gateway does not have a high installation fee. Therefore, they are a good investment considering the benefits they bring to your sales number.
Most payment portal software providers only require an account to activate their services. You also don’t have to pay a high sum for it. In addition, they offer multiple scheduled software updates to prevent malware and strengthen the protective firewalls.
Timely Cash Return
You have to wait up to 2 weeks to receive payment during COD orders. But with an online payment portal, you get the cash within 2 to 3 days of the transaction. So, you don’t have to wait for weeks to wait for the hard-earned money. With online payment portals, you can enjoy a constant cash flow to invest in your business.
Round The Clock Service
The fun part of owning an online store is that its open 24/7 and your customers can shop anytime they want. There is no time limit similar to the physical store. That is why online shoppers enjoy shopping online. Additionally, with an online payment portal, they don’t have to think twice before paying and confirming their purchase, especially when everything is according to their convenience.
What Are The Regular Transaction Steps?
Every transaction portal is different from each other, but most use these three transaction steps:
- Encryption
In the encryption step, information is securely exchanged between buyer and seller. The information transfer is encoded to keep it confidential.
- Request
The bank provides a special code request to ensure that the correct person makes the transaction. If the customer can provide that, the transaction moves to the last step.
- Fulfillment
After inserting the unique code, the bank account is charged for the specified transaction. The payment is completely processed in this last step, completing the order placement process.
How to Find the Best Payment Gateway?
As an ecommerce store owner, you must know there are many online payment portal providers. However, you need to know which one is better for your business and your customers. You also have to select a payment gateway provider which is most secure and reliable.
This is where Zaapi comes into the picture. It is an online platform that allows small business merchants to instantly set up their ecommerce store and begin selling in no time. It is also mobile application friendly and has an inbuilt secure payment portal. Learn how the Zaapi payment portal helps your ecommerce business.
How Zaapi Helps You?
After observing Southeast Asia’s ecommerce market, Zaapi knows that customers need more payment options. When the stores cannot provide them, they drive away their potential customers. That is why Zaapi has launched a new and secure payment gateway that helps you provide a seamless and secure online shopping experience to your customers. Zaapi’s payment portal offer:
Variety of Payment Options
Recent studies show that bank transfer is the most preferred payment option in Thailand, while e-wallets and credit cards rank below. Therefore, Zaapi is invested in bringing an excellent experience to all your customers. So, now your customers can choose whether they want to pay through bank transfer, credit/debit card, or e-wallet.
Automated Confirmation
The more steps between payment and order placement, the higher the chances of order cancellation. With Zaapi’s automated confirmation, you reduce multiple steps. As a result, your customer only has to follow one step, reducing the possibility of order cancellation. Furthermore, with Zaapi, payment is automatically confirmed. So you can quickly ship out the products.
100% Secure
Zaapi payment gateway is 100% secure with industry-standard encryption. It effectively protects all your and your customer’s sensitive data from online hackers and frauds. So, your customers shop from your store without worrying about their confidential information.
Reliable Customer Support
Zaapi has a broad customer support team that is ever-present to resolve your issues. If you encounter trouble with your payment portal, you instantly contact them. Zaapi support team will quickly help you with every query.
Wrapping Up
Southeast Asians now prefer to prepay online shopping as it is more convenient than the alternatives. Therefore, if an ecommerce store doesn’t support online payments, it risks losing its existing and potential customers. This is why as an ecommerce store owner, you must offer an online payment portal on your store.
But you have to ensure that the portal is completely secure and reliable to protect yourself and your customers from online banking fraud. As a result, you should use Zaapi online portal as it is protected by strict security measures to prevent any confidentiality breach. Moreover, Zaapi also offers a mobile-friendly store, so you can shift your services and allow your customers to shop anywhere from their mobiles.
