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4 Important Additional Features To Look For In A Payment Gateway

by Michelle Newman     If you are planning to setup an online store, you need a few basic things to get you off to a good start. Among them are your merchant account, service or quality products you want to sell, a well-designed merchant website, and a payment gateway. For those who have already a running online store, you are already familiar with the basic features of payment gateway: security, integration, multi currency capabilities,technical support,etc... as well as the fees you pay. Aside from these, you might like to inquire the sales people on the following important additional features of a payment gateway. <ol><li>TIME OF REMITTANCE Customers shop at your online store and make purchase transactions with their credit card. This amount goes to a number of processes before it is finally deposited in your account. Payment gateway facilitates the transfer of funds from the customer's bank account to your merchant account. In other words, the fund withdrawn from the customer's account stays temporarily with the payment gateway service provider before it is deposited in your account. You should clarify how long will your provider remit the money to your merchant account. Some payment gateways takes a week, others almost a month. As a merchant, you should know when you can have your money. </li><li>BUFFER FUNDS Think for a moment that you are a payment gateway company. Place yourself in the shoes of payment gateway provider. You deal with merchants who face potential risks of chargebacks. To protect yourself against financial losses from merchant-related transactions, you get some amount from these merchants-- called reserve funds, to defray the potential costs of any chargebacks. And this is precisely why your provider require you, as a merchant, for a reserve fund. The question is how does your provider determine the amount for your reserve fund, how long this amount is maintained, and other questions pertaining to it. To help you out, you should settle for a rolling reserve fund compared to a fixed reserve. </li><li>INTANGIBLE GOODS You need a payment gateway to allow and secure your customers' online purchase transactions from your merchant website. In general, payment gateways will only work with tangible goods-- you sell dress, toys, books, etc. On the other hand, some payment gateway will not function if you are a merchant who deals with intangibles like services or downloadable software. But don't despair. There are certain payment gateways that cater to merchants who deal with intangible merchandise. Better check with your provider on this matter. </li><li>SILENT RESPONSE If a customer shops at your site, chooses items at random, drops other items from the virtual shopping cart, or make any other changes and then pays for it, your chosen payment gateway should communicate these changes to the shopping cart. This feature is called call back response. Unfortunately, not all payment gateway has this capability. Check with your provider for the complete status of their payment gateway. ( Michelle Newman is the CEO of a leading Fortune 500 company based in San Francisco. She lectures on various business topics like marketing, competitive business strategies, and management-related issues. Miss Newman serves as business consultant for <a href="http://www.securepaymentgateways.com/">www.securepaymentgateways.com</a>. She does some business writings on her spare time.)</li></ol><a href="http://www.onlywire.com/submit?u=http://www.securepaymentgateways.com/4_important_additional_features_to_look_for_in_a_payment_gateway.html;t=payment%20gateway;tags=payment%20gateway" target="_blank" title="Add this Article to Onlywire"><img src="http://www.onlywire.com/i/onlywire.ico" alt="" />Add to Onlywire!</a>

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