If one thing’s certain in the world of e-commerce, it’s that online merchants must be prepared to do business globally. While we can all agree on that point, the logistics surrounding global payment processing are a little murkier.
In the past, it was common practice to integrate with multiple payment gateways, one for every region of the world in which you were selling, to maximize your conversions.
Today, you can sell anywhere in the world successfully with just a single payment gateway integration. In fact, a single connection to a powerful global payment platform will serve your business—and your customers—better than multiple gateways, and even accelerate business growth.
When it comes to serving international customers, one payment gateway really can do the work of many. Truly-global gateways boost your sales by giving shoppers in all corners of the world a “local” checkout experience, offering numerous payment methods (beyond just the traditional cards) to serve regional preferences. Global gateways also accept multiple currencies and support multiple languages, so every shopper feels comfortable during the buying process.
Some global gateways also work hard behind the scenes to ensure international payments succeed. Those gateways with multiple acquiring bank connections around the world reduce the chances that foreign transactions will be flagged for fraud and lower your processing costs by processing the transactions with local acquirers. So there’s never a need to partner with multiple gateways to give your customers a local buying experience—it’s possible to serve them well with just one global payment partner.
If you can get the global coverage you need with just one partner, it makes business sense to use that strategy. That’s because online merchants who use more than one gateway inevitably run into challenges that put their businesses at a disadvantage, including:
Missing out on volume pricing discounts. Splitting your business among multiple gateways makes it hard to achieve the necessary volume for gateway pricing discounts.
Spending time managing multiple vendors and contracts. Juggling the management responsibilities associated with each account takes time, money and resources.
Reconciling multiple accounts. That makes reconciliation more complex, and could introduce mistakes.
Analyzing multiple reporting sources of data. Multiple data sources take longer to analyze, and they make it harder to glean comprehensive insights about your payment process.
Integrating with multiple gateways. To make every gateway work smoothly you’ll have to code to each gateway specifically, which requires increased development time and not just once. Coding for regulatory changes and adding new payment methods, for example, means allocating extra development resources ongoing.
There’s one other important reason to work with one gateway over many: It allows you to develop a close relationship with a single payments provider who can offer valuable payments expertise as your business grows. That’s good for you as you navigate the world of global digital commerce; it’s also good for your customers, who will continue to have the best payment experience possible at your online store.
