The Truth About Payment Gateways: How to Choose Your Payments Provider

In order to survive in the digital age, businesses across all industries need to not only have a strong online presence, but the ability to properly leverage it by accepting payments online. Regardless of your business type, a payment gateway is necessary to 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. This includes credit card, debit card, and eCheck (ACH) transactions. Although these transactions seem effortless and immediate on the surface, there are a number of processes working 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 main 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: Offering a variety of payment options enhances customer convenience, allowing them to choose their preferred method. A commitment to security and cutting-edge technology for fraud prevention boosts customer trust and confidence.
• Conversion: A seamless integration with merchant systems ensures a frictionless experience for both merchants and customers, resulting in higher conversion rates and increased revenues.
  

What Makes iCG Pay Unique?

iCG Pay, formerly known as iCheckGateway.com, 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. iCG Pay offers merchants multiple options to receive money through their site, either through a payment portal or iFrame.

Payment Portal: The iCG Pay tech team creates a custom portal that seamlessly integrates with customers’ websites to include the header, footer, and functionality that matches their existing site. There are four levels of customizable options that can be implemented. We will review these options in a support call to discuss the scope of customers’ ideas, needs, and budget.

1. Generic Payment Portal: Limited in design and functionality
2. Level 1: Designed to look like the merchant’s website with up to 3 custom fields
3. Level 2: Customers can register and log in to the portal. Information is stored for future use.
4. Level 3: This is data driven. It 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. Just 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 Pay’s secure servers, not the merchants’ servers. They have two options for this service:

1. 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.
2. 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 Pay also offers robust reporting and analytics to easily view important data such as account standings or automatically post payments to their back-office system.

We process transactions 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 takes place.

Omnichannel Solutions for an Evolving Economy

We offer merchants an omnichannel approach to payments with customizable, technology-driven solutions. This provides clients and customers with a variety of convenient payment options; giving them the freedom to choose how to pay and ensuring that sales are not lost. Discover the possibilities iCG Pay has to offer:

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

The Payment Gateway Solution for Multiple Industries

Known for being user-friendly, functionally dependable, and customizable, iCG Pay’s innovative payment technologies service a broad spectrum of industries that range from utilities and healthcare, payroll, to financing, and non-profit charities.

With simple solutions to the complexities of payment processing, iCG Pay offers the latest technology to help simplify payment management and grow your business, including:

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 Pay offers five unique ACH check verification technologies available as one full suite or individually to meet your business needs.

Quickbooks Plugin: Streamline your payment management by importing transactions directly from the gateway into QuickBooks. Use the QuickBooks plugin to apply payments to invoices and process them within QuickBooks efficiently, ensuring a seamless financial workflow.

Virtual Terminal: Access all your transactions and reporting history in one place via the online terminal, regardless of how you received them.

Contact us to speak with someone about your specific payment processing needs and the solutions we have to offer you!