Payment Systems Integration Review
Payment Systems Integration Review (14 US & Global Gateways Compared)
The easier it will be for your customers to pay for your goods or services, the more revenue you’re going to generate. The payment systems integration is the most convenient way to receive payments online. That's why every online and even offline business requires payments processing. It’s a rock-solid fact!
The systems have their specific own APIs. They often come with unclearly described features or many implicit errors. These factors complicate integration and impose more responsibility for a developer. And now we want to share some insights. Our advice will be helpful for the merchants to avoid possible issues. Let's go!
The Ideal Payment System Portrait
- SecureUsers payment details must be stored as secure as it necessary. Setting the breach chance to near-zero level is a must. Otherwise, the merchant will lose its customers’ trust in one moment. A PCI-DSS Compliance suffices for this purpose.
- With fast processingThe processing time of payments is a critical feature for a wide range of businesses. Slow processing leads to high abandon rates among users.
- Has low feesToday’s businesses generally have low margins due to high competitiveness. The lowest possible fee level is a total must.
- Well documented and supportedPoor documentation and deficient support are two main pains for the developers here. These two issues make integration longer, more expensive and often decrease its quality.
- With fewer bugsThe more bugs certain payment system has, the more issues your business will face with its customers. Moreover, bugs in the payments sometimes cause heavy financial losses.
- Has a minimal level of chargebacks and declined transactionsIf the chargebacks become a regular thing, the business will face heavy losses. It’s true for declined transactions too.
- Mobile-friendlyMobile payments are trendy across the globe. If your business is unable to receive them, in most cases you lose significant profits.
- Popular among your audienceOf course, the payment system should be pretty common among your audience. Otherwise, its integration is just a waste of time and money.
- With stable sandboxTesting of software on real users is not a good practice even if we say about a simple website. But in the case of the payment system, it may lead to losses and heavy dissatisfaction.
Wait. What About Specific Payment Systems?
This payment system is a proprietary of one of the largest US financial institutions. By the end of 2017, JPMorgan Chase had as many as 46.7 mln digital customers. Chase Pay provides a checkout with online, contactless or QR payments.
As the integration is finished, you can add the Chase Pay button on your site or app. Our integration experience has fraught with a cloud of bugs. The payment gateway stopped working after the update of Gradle. It forced us to roll its previous version back.
Users Geography: USA
Popularity: high
Merchant Fees: pricing per transaction is tiered, the monthly fee for Retail, Mobile, Online - $9.95, for Retail + Mobile Checkout - $16.95, monthly minimum is $25
ACH is a famous US financial network providing direct payments. The transfers come from one bank account to another without the use of credit cards, cash, or checks. Its processing takes from three to five business days. Moreover, the checkout requires an account and routing numbers manual input. The inconvenience is negating by much lower commissions.
Some checkout operations run in the HTML iframes, which cause detection errors. Clouds of bugs and poor documentation lead to lengthy and complicated integration.
Users Geography: USA, Puerto Rico
Popularity: high
Merchant Fees: $0.25-$0.75 per transaction
Canadian-created Moneris is a direct processor, which doesn’t use any third-party services. Moneris Solutions provides everything merchants need for both retail and online, including hardware. It covers credit cards, mobile payments, and POS. All the solutions followed by documentation of perfect quality.
The obligatory 3-year contract, $300 early termination fee per location mar the impression. Quite poor support makes the same.
Users Geography: USA, Canada
Popularity: high
Merchant Fees: upon request only
Apple Pay is a system designed specially for iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch holders. It allows users to add debit, credit or prepaid cards into a single wallet and then to pay both offline and online with a few taps. It’s pretty secure due to the fact that the card info never comes from outside the app. The system is well-documented and ideally polished. During the integration, we didn’t find a single bug. What’s more, its usage is completely free: the company charges only banks.
Users Geography: worldwide
Popularity: very high
Merchant Fees: no fees for merchants nor users
Created by Mastercard, the MasterPass digital wallet allows users to store their payment and shipping info securely. The merchants are able to receive both mobile and online payments easily and completely free. The iOS framework is written in Objective-C, which made iOS integration using Swift slightly more complex than it was described in the manuals. Also, we faced a range of bugs, due to the system looking like it’s still in a quasi-beta stage. No doubt, this affected the overall view.
Users Geography: worldwide
Popularity: very high
Merchant Fees: no fees for merchants nor users
The company calls itself a leading provider of cloud-based payment gateway solutions in the USA. Specialized in HoReCa and retail, it serves more than 500,000 clients worldwide. The gateway operates with the credit cards of major US banks, providing a sufficient level of security. Merchant Link was established in 1993, but despite this fact, the integration process was riddled with a plethora of bugs. Also, if you’re so unlucky as to encounter any serious issues, it’s highly likely you will be in a persnickety situation: the tech support of Merchant Link is the absolute worst of all companies here.
Users Geography: USA
Popularity: mid
Merchant Fees: upon request only (average level declared)
Synchrony Bank is one of the biggest in the United States, and so far, the biggest card issuer thanks to providing the private labels for credit cards. Its solution is intended to process the payments in mobile apps via connected self-issued cards. Sounds good in theory, but in our case, it turned out to be full of bugs, as well as having unclear requirements. The system uses outdated libraries, which makes app updates complicated. However, the support team works fine and quickly, which is actually really helpful.
Users Geography: USA
Popularity: high
Merchant Fees: upon request only
TNS is an old and large supplier of solutions for financial, telecommunications and a few other industries. The product line includes a wide range of payment solutions for different uses. Its payment gateway works with all types of banking cards and provides thorough encryption of data. The integration process runs smoothly enough, there were no significant issues detected.
Users Geography: worldwide
Popularity: high
Merchant Fees: upon request only
It is unnecessary to reveal what Google Pay is. The payment wallet allows users to store all their cards in one place and pay securely everywhere using NFC, or, in the nearest future, within QR code. It’s free for the customers, but not for merchants. As for integration, the process is pretty smooth. In our case, the list of bug happenings was not that long. Even if you find yourself in trouble, the Google support team is friendly and helpful enough.
Users Geography: worldwide
Popularity: very high
Merchant Fees: $0 to $3,000/month - 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction;
$3,000 to $10,000/month - 2.5% + $0.30 per transaction;
$10,000 to $100,000/month - 2.2% + $0.30 per transaction;
$100,000+/month - 1.9% + $0.30 per transaction;
$10 per chargeback
The company provides different payment capabilities, including online, mobile, and POS solutions. The customers are able to connect their credit cards and pay securely. The worst thing is a 3-year contract with relatively big fines for early cancellation and non-disclosure agreement as a bonus. The integration was simple and smooth thanks to the special knowledge base with all required info and even examples.
Users Geography: worldwide
Popularity: high
Merchant Fees: 2.75% + £0.20 per transaction or
2.75% (Credit) and 0.75% (Debit) +£19.95 monthly
Loyalty product provider, ZipLine has its own solution for specific payments with a smartphone. The payments come in the form of ACH debit transactions. It means lower fees but many challenges in processing preparations, including a PIN code, driver license information, the last four digits of the social security number, etc. ZipLine is secure, maybe even too much. In our case, it was tied in with the fact that fingerprint that a user was identified with, sometimes became outdated while a payment was still in process. The worst thing was that the number of bugs we bumped into was massive In this department, ZipLine is dead last on our listing.
Users Geography: USA
Popularity: average
Merchant Fees: upon request only
Over the last several years, Stripe became one of the fastest-growing payment systems. The key to success is simple: Stripe is fully transparent and understandable. While most of the other payment systems are a pain in the ass of the developer, Stripe is a friend. The documentation is super detailed, support does its best all the time, and testing environment copies the real processes in full. For buyers and merchants, Stripe provides flat rates that are easy to understand and evaluate.
Users Geography: worldwide
Popularity: high
Merchant Fees: 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction
Amazon Pay is designed especially for Amazon shoppers and their clients. It provides quite a smooth and simple shopping experience, which made the system well-beloved by users with a solid 98% satisfaction rate. The well-polished code struck a chord in the hearts of tech people, but the gateway itself is not the simplest one we've tested. That's why integration lasted longer than you can expect. To the integration process, in our case, it ran seamlessly. The payment system has airtight documentation and well-trained support.
Users Geography: worldwide (selected countries)
Popularity: high
Merchant Fees: 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction;
3.9% cross-border fee;
$20 per chargeback
The main advantage of the payment wallet implemented by Samsung in their phones is that it’s able to work not only within NFC but also by imitating and old-hat magnetic stripe signal. Other features are pretty similar – wallet supports all the main kinds of cards, enables secure storing of the data, etc. There are no fees for merchants nor users, that’s why the technology is perfect for micropayments. The integration revealed only a few bugs, all the info is freely available online, and support works well.
Users Geography: worldwide
Popularity: very high
Merchant Fees: no fees for merchants nor users
This payment solution is one of the best known in the world, uniting about 267 mln users worldwide. It has its own wallet with secure and pretty easy payments. For the merchants, PayPal offers different ways of integration, including HTML code and API. The software is well polished and documented, moreover, there are ready-made solutions for several of the most popular eCommerce platforms. It means that the integration is transparent and almost risk-free. The cons include relatively high commissions, especially for the microtransactions.
Users Geography: worldwide
Popularity: very high
Merchant Fees: 2.9% + fixed currency fee per transaction; 5% + fixed currency fee per transaction for transactions less than $12 (look here)
