Factors to consider while choosing a payment gateway

HealthifyMe needed to choose a payment gateway when they decided to go back to the web to reach a broader audience. 

Their app was doing exceptionally well – a consistent 4+ rating and over 10 million active users. But having grown beyond the Indian market, their presence on the web mattered a lot. They could not reach a larger set of users through their regular marketing channels, and going beyond the app was integral to acquiring new users. For this, they needed a payment gateway.

And Razorpay became their default choice. Anjaan Bhojarajan, VP – Growth and Head of Product, HealthifyMe, says, “Razorpay has a great checkout mechanism, which helped us educate our users about our plans. Our conversion ratio has been through the roof with the integration.”

Integrating with Razorpay has been extremely beneficial for HealthifyMe. Razorpay now powers 100% of their web payments and is expected to contribute to 30% of their revenues. But was the decision to choose Razorpay an easy one? It never is. 

A lot of product managers, startup founders or small business owners find it challenging to choose a payment gateway for their business out of the many options available to them. This article aims to help you choose the best payment gateway for your business.

What to look for in a payment gateway?

Any of the top payment gateways will have the following:

• Good success rates
• Multiple payment modes
• Easy and quick onboarding
• PCI-DSS compliant security
• Insightful and intuitive dashboard
• Competitive pricing options 
• Free setup costs and no annual maintenance charges

This is the very basic that a payment gateway should have. So what makes a decent payment gateway good?

Factors to consider Payment gateway

Here are some helpful factors to consider while choosing a Payment Gateway:

1. It is more than a payment gateway

Don’t think of a payment gateway as merely a digital payments enabler. A payment gateway can be the growth engine of your business. The payment gateway that you choose should have a host of other products or features that make up the payments suite. 

Here is what the Razorpay Payments Suite comes equipped with, along with our Payment Gateway:

• Razorpay Payment Links allows you to create and send links to your customers via SMS, email, WhatsApp, social media and chatbots. Businesses that have the payment gateway can use Payment Links to send payment reminders to their customers or convert customers that have abandoned their carts or send payment links in bulk to multiple customers, and more
• Razorpay Payment Pages helps businesses create a storefront to display their products and services. Even if you might have a payment gateway, you can use Payment Pages for specific purposes like collecting donations, selling tickets for your events, market a seasonal product or service, and more
• The Razorpay ePOS app allows businesses to collect digital payments in the offline world. You can empower your sales or delivery force with the ePOS app and allow them to collect digital payments from customers at the time of a physical interaction

2. It enables recurring payments 

India has seen significant growth in subscription-based businesses over the past year or so. Running a subscriptions business allows you to retain a customer for longer, making them coming back for more. To do this effectively, you need a payment gateway that will enable you to accept recurring payments with ease.

Here’s everything that you can do with Razorpay Subscriptions:

• Give your customers the option to pay you periodically through various modes like credit cards, debit cards, e-mandates, NACH and now, also UPI
• Get onboard with UPI AutoPay to open up an entirely new channel of customer acquisition by allowing your customers to pay using UPI, which is everyone’s favourite payment mode
• Create multiple billing models setting payment schedules based on fixed payments, quantities or usage. You can also offer your customers trial periods and charge an upfront amount before the subscription begins

3. It empowers you to run offers

A prospective customer might sometimes drop off because your product or service would exceed their budget. They could also go away to your competitor because of a discount. Offers and discounts are a great way to grow your business, and you should be able to run them right from your payment gateway.

Here are some types of offers you can run using Razorpay Payment Gateway:

• Run offers from specific cards, wallets or banks with a click of a button. You can even run festival or promotional offers to boost your sales during specific times
• Give your customers the option to pay via no cost card EMIs as well as cardless EMIs. Razorpay also allows businesses to integrate with PayLater service providers through the payment gateway easily

4. It is effortless to integrate 

Most small businesses don’t have the bandwidth and/or expertise required for complicated tech integrations. They would often even outsource the tech work to a freelancer or another company. In either case, they would require a solution that is easy and quick to execute. 

Here is why Razorpay is one of the easiest payment gateways to integrate:

• Razorpay is built for developers and comes with well-documented SDKs, RESTful APIs and plugins for all major platforms like WooCommerce, Shopify, Magento and more
• With options like Payment Pages and Payment Links, businesses can start using Razorpay even while the Payment Gateway integration is in the works, ensuring that your business is online and you are giving your customers a seamless payments experience 

5. It supports all business types

For big businesses or enterprises, getting onto the online payments bandwagon is relatively straightforward. But for smaller companies, the digital payments landscape can be difficult to navigate. The going gets tougher for individual businesses, homepreneurs and freelancers. 

Here’s how freelancers and individual businesses can use Razorpay:

• Individual businesses require only a PAN card and any one of Aadhar card or driving licence or voter ID, and in some cases a cancelled cheque to get started with Razorpay
• You can use Razorpay Payment Pages to showcase your brand and products without any design or tech effort required. We have several templates you can choose from and customize
• With Razorpay Payment Links, you can accept digital payments from our ePOS app by sending the link across to on social media, WhatsApp, email and SMS

Related Read: How to Get a Business Pan Card?

In conclusion

Choosing the best payment gateway for your business is not easy, but with a little bit of guidance, you can make the right choice. Making this choice with precise requirements in place is essential because you can’t keep changing a payment gateway. It is ideally a long-term association for your business. 

Signup with Razorpay today and find out how choosing the best payment gateway can help you grow your business.