Even just a decade ago, a business could get away with just offering a payment method or two. Cash, of course, was king. Many people also took checks.

And they might have stopped with just those two, or they might have added in credit cards. But then the years passed and of course debit cards were added. And now? Now payments are all over the map. Businesses might accept an in-store app that pays with the swipe of a smart phone. They might accept online payments using apps that process things for them and don’t require customers to enter in any information; it’s already stored somewhere else.

Especially if businesses want to appeal to younger generations, they cannot be content with old-fashioned methods of payment. They have to offer more ways, and those ways have to be tech savvy. People want to trust that how they are paying is secure, and many online methods provide that sense of trust.

Here’s the other thing about providing multiple methods of payment that respond to various needs and expectations: You’re opening up your lines of business not just to people across town, but to people across the globe.

And if you have more payment options available, you’re less likely to lose people who put things in a shopping cart and abandon it for reasons you’ll never be able to discover.

Of course, the future promises to bring even more variety in payment methods, so even if you don’t utilize them in e-commerce, it’s helpful to understand them. For example, there are things such as Bitcoin, which focuses on transferring payments around the globe. There’s also even e-commerce financing, in an old-meets-new method of payment.

What do all the options look like and what should you consider in all of them?

This infographic helps to explain it.

ecommerce payments

Multiple payment options are a great way to get more from your ecommerce website.

At the very least you should offer PayPal plus a credit card processor to give your customers some choice in the way they pay.
Some people think you need a PayPal account to make PayPal payments – You don’t, and this loses sales.

Some people dislike paying with their credit/debit cars and prefer PayPal as they think it’s more secure – This loses you sales.

These are things to think of before you start developing your ecommerce website. When working with an ecommerce web developer, ensure that you plan your project correctly and get the right payment processors in place to give you the best chance of maximising your revenue and online sales.

If you run a marketplace then one of the great payment processors to use is Mangopay, which allows the use of online wallets and a flexible set up to divert funds across a website to multiple users.

The MangoPay API integration and set up was built for web developers and allows for KYC checking and other security requirements.