Payment Gateway Integration
Full-Service Payment Processing vs. Payment Gateway Only Providers
If you’re like most software providers, happy, satisfied customers are essential assets. As a result, giving your customers the ability to process credit card payments through your software is crucial to maintaining and growing your business. With a wide range of options available, it can be challenging to decide which type of payment integration is better —a payment gateway provider or a full-service payment provider.
What is a Full-Service Payment Provider?
A full-service payment provider acts as both a payment processor and a gateway. This gives customers a choice when it comes to who provides their merchant services. When software providers work with a full-service payment provider they are working with a partner that owns their technology. Many third-party payment gateways are often used by merchant services providers that do not own their own technology.
Another advantage of using a full-service provider is merchants can take advantage of value added services such as tokenization, card account updater and point-to-point encryption. Rather than just simply serving as a toll booth to route the transaction to an endpoint, a full-service payment provider does it all.
When software providers choose to partner with a full-service payment provider, both the software provider and their merchants benefit as the payments chain is drastically simplified and cost is reduced.
What is a Payment Gateway?
A payment gateway only provider is an interface that simply routes payment transactions to an endpoint. A payment gateway interface adds payment functionality to software applications and e-commerce websites. Since the gateway acts as a transaction router only there are additional fees that merchants must pay in addition to their traditional merchant services fees. When issues arise merchants may experience service frustrations as with a payment gateway only provider there are additional players in the game.
We recommend asking yourself three questions before deciding if a gateway-only option fits your needs:
- Does it improve the user experience?
- Will your customers incur increased costs?
- Will it help me grow my business?
If any of these answers are “no,” it may be time to consider a full-service payment provider.
Integration Perfected
Paragon Payment Solutions offers solutions that are designed especially for software providers and their customers. Focusing on integrated payments and strategic partnerships, we provide cost-effective custom-built programs to meet your needs. Contact us to learn more.
Ready to see our API or open a test account? Looking for more information on our Partner Programs? Are you a merchant with a question? We are here to help!