How to get payment gateways right
We end up explaining this on discovery calls often enough that it deserved writing down. The short answer to payment gateways is that it is mostly a sequence of small decisions, not one big one.
Small percentage changes matter here because they apply to every order, every month. Assume whoever inherits this will have half your context and none of your patience.
The reason this keeps coming up
Offer the methods your customers already use. There is a version of this that is over-engineered, and it is worth avoiding. Assume whoever inherits this will have half your context and none of your patience.
The steps
- Establish what you have today before changing anything
- Fees differ more than the marketing pages suggest
- Never store card details you do not need
- Write down the decision so the next person does not re-litigate it
Never store card details you do not need. The teams that handle this well are rarely the ones with the biggest budgets. Most teams find the first pass takes an afternoon and the maintenance takes minutes a month.
Turning this into a decision
How to tell if yours is fine
Trust does most of the selling online, and trust is built from unglamorous details. Three things worth confirming about payment gateways before you move on:
- Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
- Never store card details you do not need — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
Worth checking on your own setup before it becomes someone else's problem to fix.