How to Choose A Payments Provider?

To survive in the digital age, businesses across all industries must have a solid online presence and know how to accept payments online. Regardless of your business type, a payment gateway must accept digital payments securely.

A payment gateway is a third-party hosted payment software that acts as a conduit between the buyer and the seller. The gateway enables the secure transfer of digital payment information like credit card, debit card, and eCheck (ACH) transactions. Although these transactions seem effortless and immediate, several processes work behind the scenes to seamlessly move funds from buyer to seller.

There are plenty of payment gateway providers and services to choose from, but finding one best suited for your business needs is critical. Here are a few factors to consider:

Not All Gateways Are Created Equal

As a business owner, it is crucial to choose a payment gateway solution that is secure, scalable, and offers customizable features. There are three primary considerations for finding the ideal gateway provider:

• Cost- A payment provider with knowledge and expertise in your industry will be able to provide a solution that fits your business, resulting in less downtime and eliminating costly IT intervention.
• Customer Confidence– Accepting multiple payment forms ensures customers can pay how they feel most convenient. A provider focused on security and the latest technology to ensure fraud prevention gives customers confidence.
• Conversion- A seamless integration with merchant systems ensures a frictionless experience for merchants and customers, resulting in higher conversion rates and increased revenues.

What Makes iCheckGateway.com Unique?

iCheckGateway.com (iCG) is a leading payment gateway and merchant services provider that combines powerful ACH and credit card processing in one unified affordable solution. We offer customizable APIs to seamlessly integrate with your native software systems, allowing frictionless payment processing. We also support multiple options with the ability to pay within their site through a payment portal or iFrame.

Payment Portal- The ICG tech team creates a custom portal that seamlessly integrates with customers’ websites to include the header, footer, and functionality that matches their existing site. We offer four levels of customizable options, and our team reviews them in a support call to discuss the scope of customers’ ideas, needs, and budgets.

• Generic Payment Portal- Limited in design and functionality
• Level 1- Designed to look like a merchant’s website; up to 3 custom fields
• Level 2- Allows the customer to register and login into the portal; info is stored for future use
• Level 3- Data-driven; provides a customer with balance due amounts, payment history, etc.

iFrame- The merchant has their tech team developing and creating the custom fields for their customer login information. Like the payment portal, the merchant still has fraud protection, keeping them out of PCI scope and preventing the need to hold any credit card or bank account information on their database servers. The iFrame window will embed only the fields that display the credit card or bank account information, passing this sensitive data through ICG’s secure servers, not the merchants’ servers. They have two options for this service:

• Generate a token only: Used when the merchant only wants to input the data for future payments. No payment would process at the time of the tokenization.
• Generate a token and process a payment when the token is approved: Used when merchants want to run payments immediately or set up payments in the future.

iCG also offers robust reporting and analytics to easily view important data such as account standings or automatically post payments to their back-office system. With iCheckGateway.com, transactions are processed through our secure gateway, so your customers have a seamless user experience, and you stay out of PCI scope. Settlements are fast and secure, so you receive your funds quickly after a transaction occurs.

Omnichannel Solutions for an Evolving Economy

iCheckGateway.com offers merchants an omnichannel approach to payments with customizable, technology-driven solutions. This provides clients and customers with various convenient payment options, allowing them to choose how to pay and ensuring that sales are not lost. Discover the possibilities ICG has to offer:

• ACH
• Credit cards
• IVR
• Mobile
• Recurring payments
• Email and SMS invoicing

The Payment Gateway Solution for Every Industry

iCheckGateway.com’s innovative payment technologies service a broad spectrum of industries ranging from utilities and healthcare, payroll, financing, and non-profit charities. With simple solutions to the complexities of payment processing, iCG offers the following additional technologies to simplify payment management and grow your business:

• Check Verification Services- Real-time access to both positive and negative account information to mitigate potential fraud and reduce the likelihood of unpaid or returned items. ICG offers five unique ACH check verification technologies available as one full suite or individually to meet your business needs.
• Quickbooks Plugin- Import payments from the gateway into Quickbooks, using the Quickbooks plugin to apply them to invoices and process payments directly within Quickbooks for seamless payment management.
• Virtual Terminal- All transactions and reporting history can be accessed in one place via the online terminal regardless of how they were received.

Schedule a call with our relationship managers to discuss your payment processing needs today!

Date Originally Published: December 14, 2020

Date Updated: August 1, 2022