How to integrate a payment gateway on your website

A payment gateway is crucial when it comes to accepting card payments. It’s the technology that connects all the integral parts of the process together to facilitate and authenticate the payment.

Without one, you’ll be limiting yourself to cash-only payments; and in this day and age, we hate to say it, but your business will struggle to succeed. But how do you integrate a payment gateway on your website and where do you begin? We’ll tell you…

What's in this article:

• How to choose a payment gateway
• The difference between hosted and integrated payment gateway
• How to get started with your integrated payment gateway

How to choose a payment gateway

Before we go into payment gateway integration, first up, you’ll need to find a payment gateway that is suitable to your business model. The payment gateway you choose can impact your customer’s experience and your business’ scalability because they can provide different capabilities.

A few things you’ll need to ask yourself when considering your payment gateway service provider include:

• How much does the service cost?
• Does it have scalability capabilities that match your business plans?
• Can the gateway integrate the relevant plugins and third-party processors?
• Can it offer multiple payment methods and currencies?
• Does it provide in-depth transaction insights?
• How long are the processing and settlement times?

All of these factors will affect both your business and your customers. So, if you pick the wrong gateway, you could end up limiting your business potential and have a high decline rate or high abandoned cart rate due to unsatisfied customers at the checkout.

For more tips on how to get it right, check out our blog on choosing the right gateway.

The difference between hosted and integrated payment gateway

When looking into an online payment gateway service, you may have come across different types, specifically a hosted or integrated payment gateway. So, we’ll quickly cover what they are and which may be more suitable for your business.

Hosted payment gateway

A hosted payment gateway is when the payment form is not on your website. The customer will be redirected to the ‘hosted’ platform to complete the payment. An example of this is PayPal and, although this can make things easier during the integration stage, the customer experience is less seamless, which can have a negative impact on your conversation rate.

Integrated payment gateway      

An integrated payment gateway is when the payment form has been embedded into your own checkout so the customer will remain on your website. This option will require an Application Programming Interface (API) but does improve the customer’s journey, which in turn, can help to boost customer trust and conversions.

Here at Total Processing, we offer an integrated payment gateway, and with a dedicated team of experts, we will guide you through the whole process.

How to get started with your integrated payment gateway

Payment gateway integration is easy when you’re with the right provider. Whether you're looking for a gateway for your e-commerce website, your Forex business or a SaaS platform, we have a number of ways in which you can integrate the payment gateway into your checkout.

So, to get started, the first thing you’ll need to do is consider your business model and how you want to accept payments. We can help you with this through a one-to-one strategy session with one of our payment experts.

But here’s an overview of our integration options:

• Integrated payment form – To have the payment form integrated into your checkout, we use the embedded payment form widget, COPYandPAY, which is integrated via an API. It’s fairly simple to set up and has a variety of customisable features so you can amend the look and feel to match your website.
• E-commerce plugins – Our payment platform supports a variety of e-commerce platforms, including WordPress and Shopify, with a variety of compatible plugins, so you can choose the most suitable depending on your type of business and which CMS you use. For example, WooCommerce is an e-commerce plugin for WordPress.
• Alternative payment methods – There are certain payment options that also require their own setup to be added to your payment form, like Apple Pay and Google Pay. So, if you want to offer a variety of payment methods, which we would recommend, then this is something you’d need to have integrated into the gateway.
• Total Control 3 – Last but certainly not least is our Total Control platform. The dashboard will communicate with the gateway allowing you to accept payments via a virtual terminal and pay by links, as well as provide in-depth transaction data.

If you’re ready to explore our online payment gateway integration service and how it can benefit your business, get in touch and speak to one of our specialists.

Alternatively, you can find out more technical information regarding how to create a website with a payment gateway and how to install plugins to accept payments via our knowledge base.