Payment gateways are useful tools for online sellers as well as physical store owners as they facilitate digital payments for customers.
As technology evolves to cover newer marketplaces and payment options, payment gateways become more crucial than ever in helping businesses grow.
While there are several options available in the market, the best ones offer affordable fees, ease of use, and impressive payment processing options.
Let us look at some of the best payment gateways for small businesses in 2022.
Payline
A small business specialist gateway, Payline offers solutions catered to businesses ranging from startups and small businesses to large enterprises. Payment solutions from the company are designed to work with over 170 online shopping carts and you can also use mobile solutions to accept payments via mobile apps.
The gateway also features integration with QuickBooks to simplify finances and payroll management. For brick-and-mortar stores, Payline charges a monthly fee along with a percentage charge on every transaction.
These charges are somewhat higher for online stores. It is overall an excellent payment gateway with speed, security, and efficiency.
Stripe
Another powerful platform designed to facilitate online businesses; Stripe is known to handle a large number of transactions every year.
What makes this service different from others is that it gives you an array of flexible tools to customize your payment processes as your business grows and requirements change.
Stripe offers several features one would expect from a global payment gateway system including support for a large number of currencies, mobile payments, one-click checkout, transaction tracking, and reporting, subscription billing, and more. It even offers a virtual POS to make it easy to bring together online and offline payments.
Braintree
One of the best options for startups and small businesses, Braintree is currently operated by PayPal. It is an easy-to-use platform that supports online and in-store payments.
It offers a comprehensive interface that creates a convenient checkout process on a website and integrates seamlessly with eCommerce platforms, analytics software, invoicing solutions, and more.
Braintree offers a merchant service account and works with digital wallets, credit cards, Venmo, PayPal, and other options in more than 130 currencies.
It also offers mobile payments, customer loyalty, and Vault for the security of customer data. Some other features of this service include data encryption, fraud prevention, customer data management, reporting tools, etc.
PayPal
PayPal remains a versatile and renowned online payment processor and suits businesses from startups to enterprises. It lets online businesses pay with PayPal and any other type of payment at affordable rates.
It delivers payment processing services for online vendors, marketplaces, and other global entities and supports Visa, Amex, and other credit cards. It also comes with customization options, easy cart integration, online invoicing, and other features.
PayPal accepts over 100 currencies and allows merchants to accept payments in several different ways. It also supports QR codes, Venmo, buy now pay later financing, and payment links. It is difficult to find another provider offering so much under one roof.
2Checkout
This is a common payment gateway used by online merchants as it is available as a plugin for eCommerce platforms and supports a wide range of international currencies.
It currently serves customers in more than 200 countries across the world in over 100 currencies. The payment system accepts all major credit cards and types including PayPal, JCB, Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and more.
With 2Checkout, you can host your checkout page, integrate payment processing with eCommerce platforms, invoicing solutions, and shopping carts, compile payment history, set recurring transactions, and do more. It stands out for the facility to provide localized buying experiences, discounts, coupons. It offers a dashboard that gives a quick insight into sales and other metrics.
Square
An excellent payment gateway for brick and mortar businesses as well as online merchants, Square lets you accept in-person as well as internet-based payments without any setup charges. It offers an online payment solution that can be used on smart devices.
Square supports credit card payments as well as other modes like Apple Pay, Google Pay, and others though it doesn’t support PayPal. It can also process electronic check payments, allowing you to accept payments through an invoice, phone, or website.
One of the most impressive things about Square is its ease of setup. The software can be downloaded on your Android or iOS device and you can start accepting payments through a card reader that the company gives for free. One can accept card payments from a phone or tablet, making it ideal for local markets, food carts, and mobile merchants.
Authorize.Net
Authorize.net is one of the oldest payment gateway services that today manages more than one billion transactions and 430,000 vendors yearly. It is a popular choice for its ease of setup, support for any merchant account, and global transaction facility.
It has partnered with a large number of merchant account providers so that users can accept payments from debit and credit cards, e-checks, digital payments, and other payment types from any country.
The platform is pretty straightforward and user-friendly, making it ideal for new as well as experienced merchants. It is not only a service that accepts more payment types than others but is also one of the few platforms to accept PayPal.
It also allows using your existing merchant account with the payment gateway though you can opt for the package that includes an account along with a payment gateway. Both the options offer a variety of features including fraud prevention, mobile payments, recurring payments, card reader, and invoicing among others.
Final Thoughts
Payment gateways come with varied features and pricing structures. The best service for you depends on many factors unique to businesses. You must pay attention to different factors to compare the options and identify the best one.
Look at the technical expertise of the provider, account flexibility, and payment methods you want to support among other things to determine the right payment gateway for your small business.