We’re frequently asked by clients about how they can allow their customers to make payments online through their website. It can actually be done with minimal effort and budget, and offers some great benefits that include:
- providing an additional method for clients to make payments,
- providing service 24/7; allowing customers to make payment by credit card whether someone is in the office or not (it’s nice checking your email in the morning and finding several payment receipts!)
- like offline credit card transactions, once the payment is made, its made. It’s not a check that can be “in the mail”, or worse, bounce.
To discuss how we can get this up and running on your site, please contact us.
Here’s a video that demonstrates the process in action.
How does it work?
We do this on our own site at seethroughweb.com, providing a page where a client enters an invoice number and amount, confirms, and then is transferred to the “hosted payment page” of InternetSecure (our “payment gateway”). Once on this secure page, the client then enters their full credit details and makes the actual transaction (demonstration video below).
Most payment gateways offer hosted payment pages (all that we’ve worked with); the real advantage of this method is that the gateway handles the technical and security requirements to perform the transaction, greatly reducing the cost and effort that might otherwise be required to set up online payments.
When the payment is complete, the customer receives a receipt by email, and we receive a “successful transaction” email that is very similar to their receipt. They are then transferred back to a “thank you” page on our website (or a “there was a problem” page if the transaction didn’t go through).
Payment processors we’ve worked with include: InternetSecure, Moneris, Beanstream, PSiGate, and Desjardins; and we can likely connect with most others as well. Paypal can also be used and is actually quite flexible, allowing customers the option of paying with their credit card or with their Paypal account if they have one.
Paypal is also a pretty good solution for a small business about to start taking payment online in that they have accounts with no setup charges, no monthly fees, and they become active right away.
