In continuation to our previous article, “Selecting your E-Commerce Payment Gateway”, which elucidated on how a payment gateway works, the types of payment gateways and essential considerations to choose a payment gateway for your e-commerce site, this article attempts to provide a comparison of the major payment gateways at the international level, as well as in the Indian market.

Top 5 International Payment Gateways

1.    PayPal: PayPal is a wholly owned subsidiary of eBay and is the world’s most popular payment acquirer. In fact, it has over 220 million users, who use it to send and receive money instantly. It has numerous advantages namely personal data protection using payment tokenization, easy to access and use, payment processing in over 24 currencies across the world and acceptance on eBay. The biggest disadvantage is the fact that PayPal has the liberty to freeze your account at its will, which entangled it in a controversy with WikiLeaks in 2010. Read more at here
To understand how PayPal works, read this

2.    Authorize.Net: Authorize.Net is a payment gateway service provider widely popular across USA and Canada that enables merchants to authorize, settle and manage online transactions. It also facilitates transactions from call centres, mobile devices, mail orders and has an estimated user base of 350,000 merchants. Its biggest advantage is its popularity and ease of integration with popular e-commerce platforms such as Magento, Volusion, X-Cart and several others. It is known for its speed and efficiency, and if you don’t have a merchant account, they create the same for you at no additional costs. However, Authorize.Net’s large user base makes it an ideal target for hackers and extortionists. Such an attack occurred in September 2004 and caused a virtual shutdown of its services for over one week. Read more at here

3.    World Pay: The Company started off with the name “Streamline” in 1989 and went on to provide online payment servicers in 1994. It was acquired by RBS in 2002 and sold by it in 2010. It offers the benefits of multi-currency payments and operates in over 40 countries, with small/medium business solutions as well as corporate solutions, to suit the requirements of all types of businesses. However, it has poor fraud detection systems, and offers very limited customization of pages.

4.    2Checkout: 2Checkout is a US based payment gateway service provider that provides checkout services in over 15 languages and more than 20 currencies. It is widely used across the US, Canada and UK, and offers dynamic checkout as well as direct checkout options. It is known to have good fraud detection systems in place and refunds money within 48 hours. However, its technical support services are not sound, and it has very less features to offer.

5.    Moneybookers: Moneybookers is a UK based payment gateway service provider, which has been rebranded as Skrill in 2012. It enables transactions in 41 currencies, across 200 countries. It is largely popular across Europe and offers digital wallet payment processing in addition to direct payment processing services. However, it is surrounded amidst a lot of controversies and negative feedback owing to the freezing of accounts without prior consent of account holders.

Top 7 Payment Gateways in India

1.    CCAvenue: This was established by the Avenues group in 2001 and is so far, the most popular and widely used payment gateway in India. Not only is it found to be extremely reliable and safe, it offers the largest number of payment options including debit cards, credit cards, net banking, ATM cum debit cards, cash cards and mobile payments. It is used by most eCommerce giants in India like flipkart, makemytrip, timesjobs, Yatra, snapdeal, Cleartrip, Expedia, naukri.com, shaadi.com and so on. However, many are of the opinion that owing to the monopoly of this payment gateway on the market, it imposes a lot of unnecessary charges and does not offer any customization for or negotiation with small and medium businesses that operate on a tighter budget.

2.    EBS: EBS or E Billing Solutions was started by Axis Bank in 2005 and is getting increasingly popular on account of its responsiveness and flexible rates for small and medium business startups. Although their coverage of banks and payment options is not as wide as that of ccavenues, but have the best risk management systems in place (the first Indian payment gateway to achieve PCI DSS 1.1 Standards of Compliance; read more about the standards here https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/security_standards/) and excellent customer support services.

3.    ICICI Payseal: ICICI Payseal is a payment gateway that was launched by ICICI Bank, the largest private sector bank in India, after a tie-up with First Data (a payment solutions service provider) in 2000. Its advantages include its high reliability and good fraud protection systems, while its downside is the fact that Payseal Payment Integration Scripts are in JSP, and require web servers such as Tomcat to execute the JSP scripts.

4.    HDFC Payment Gateway: This has detailed eligibility criteria for the payment gateway for merchants and only allows businesses that have been in existence for 6 months or more to apply for the services. Its advantages include its security and flexibility that includes the acceptance of major debit and credit cards. However, it utilizes Java architecture, which could be a hassle at times.

5.    Transecute: Transecute is a Mumbai based payment gateway service provider that has recently gained popularity since it doesn’t charge set up fees or withdrawal fees, and has a good fraud detection system. However, the range of payment options it provides is limited.

6.    Pay U: This was launched in 2011 by Nasper (The South African multinational media company that owns Ibibo) in collaboration with a Chinese Tech Company, Tencent. It offers competitive rates and accepts American Express, Master Card and Debit Cards from 60 banks and Net Banking of 9 banks. Sites like goibibo.com and tradus.com use this payment gateway.

7.    DirecPay: This has been launched by the Times Group, and offers three types of packages namely Silver, Gold and Platinum. Payment modes accepted include mobile payments as well. It has a provision of capturing and providing customer information in case of abandoned transactions.

Keep your options open

Owing to the massive upsurge of e-commerce businesses in recent times, the importance of reliable payment gateway service providers has increased manifold, and new players keep emerging with time. For instance, the latest entrants in the Indian market include Citrus, Atom, LinkWay Hosting, SeedCore Group and GePG (Government e-Payment Gateway introduced by Government of India). In the above list, we have attempted to provide an overall review of some of the most popular payment gateways in the Indian as well as International markets. However, there are a number of other payment gateways apart from those that are mentioned above, and it is best to look at all possible options before choosing the right one for your ecommerce venture.