: What payment gateways do real customers really use when given the choice? I would like to give customers the option of paying however they can whether that be through a proper gateway (e.g.

@Sims2060225

I will talk about personal experience only.

We have a few e-commerce sites that sell retail computer software in different countries (UK, USA, Australia). I will use UK as an example.

We use SagePay as payment processing gateway. We also have Google Checkout implemented. When customer is on a Basket page he has a choice of "Checkout Now" using our own checkout process (payments will be processed via SagePay) or Google Checkout (where he gets redirected on Google site and does the rest there).

The results: in average maybe 1 out of 50-60 orders gets placed using Google Checkout. If per month we can make,lets say, 400-500K worth of sales using our own checkout process, Google Checkout makes max 20K. I have to mention that about 40% of orders are made by returning customers (regular .. or those who have more than 1-2 orders, even if they placing it once a year).

PayPal -- we got asked 2-3 times a month if they can pay using PayPal .. but company does not want to deal with it (I don't remember exact explanation but it has something to do hight rates, the fact that PayPal can easily suspend your account in case of complaint (even if it is a ridiculous complaint -- like "I have ordered it midnight why don't I have it delivered it by 9AM") and the hassle of proving that you are not "an elephant" afterwards).

But if we would have it (PayPal) implemented on our site, I would imagine that it will beat Google Checkout with ease: it is well known, possibly everyone has an account already.

Taking all this together it is definite that SagePay works best for us, especially in terms of charges: If customer pays by Debit Card you pay just 10p for a transaction; Credit Card -- around 2.2% (that's depends on you actual agreement and is different for each company, how much transactions per month you have, the amounts etc) or around 1.3% if transaction is 3D-Secure -- each company get their own rates -- those are just approximations.

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@Pope3001725

People will use whatever form of payment they are most comfortable with. So the more payment options you offer, the more likely a user is to make a purchase on your website. The downside to this, for you as the webmaster (or owner) of that website is you have multiple sources of payments that you need to integrate and test as well as reconcile your books to.

Offering your customer multiple ways to pay is only as confusing as you make it. If you clearly display their options to them it should be very easy for them to make payment. Making your payment options page very visual (i.e. images/logos of Paypal, and Amazon, Google Checkout, and credit card images for the major credit cards you take if you are also using a true merchant account) is an important part of that process. Making the checkout process as similar as possible for all of your payment methods is also a good idea. Naturally you have little control of the customer experience if they have to leave your site to make payment on the third party processor's website (i.e. Paypal) but you do control everything up to and after they leave your site.

No one can tell you for sure that using Amazon, or any other payment provider, will increase sales because just offering it doesn't necessarily mean it will increase sales. How you present the payment options and your type of customer will have the most influence on whether offering a specific payment processor will increase sales. For example, if your clientele are typical eBay users then offering Paypal as a payment option will definitely increase sales. If your clientele are readers or academics, offering Amazon probably will increase sales, etc.

Since most third party payment providers do not have set up or monthly fees it is worth offering them to your customers. Then you can see which ones perform well and which ones do not. You can later drop the poorly performing ones to make your checkout less cluttered and easier to use.

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