7 Advantages of Using Multiple Payment Gateways

A business can drive faster growth with technical innovation. Pushing infrastructural boundaries helps an innovative company expand into additional markets, business lines, and geographies. Yet, the business demand often remains constrained due to their integrated payment gateway limitations. That is why it makes sense to use multiple payment gateways to bring flexibility to payments and infrastructures.

A single payment gateway may not meet all the merchant’s needs and expectations. Many fast-growing, innovative companies rely on multiple payment gateways to support their changing and unique payment needs. Below, we will explore the benefits of using more than one payment gateway.

1. Have Backup When the Primary Gateway Goes Down

While downtimes are not so frequent, they sometimes happen and lead to sharp transaction declines and even complete outages. That means that if a subscriber tries to sign up or a potential buyer tries to place an order, they cannot do that. Lost revenue can be devastating to large-scale businesses that process multiple transactions within a few minutes. When there is a second gateway in place, the transaction can be routed to it, ensuring successful transactions on the first attempt.

2. Increased Global Coverage

Multiple payment gateways will be ideal when the business expands abroad. As the merchant starts selling across countries, it needs varying support levels for particular countries. It needs an integrated payment gateway that supports multiple payment methods in different currencies. Businesses can route transactions to the most suitable gateway for a particular geographical region by adding numerous gateways in the payment system. It results in an improved transaction success rate across different markets.

3. Multiple Payment Options

Most buyers already have a payment method in mind, using which they will make the payment. Some have UPI as their first preference, others are more comfortable with credit card payments, and many are habitual of using their digital wallets. So, offering a bunch of payment methods at checkout is recommended.

Providing the customer’s preferred payment option is an integral part of excellent customer service. A merchant can provide different payment options to the customers by integrating multiple gateways into their system. Having other payment options builds excellent customer support efficiently. Simultaneously, it gives a backup in case of an issue in the primary payment processing management system.

4. Risk Mitigation and Load Balancing

Every business experiences a heavier processing load at one time of the day or the other. Therefore, having other payment gateways in the system will divert some traffic to other gateways. This will minimize outages and other issues impacting conversions and transaction success rates.

5. Improved Acceptance Rates

Different payment gateways may have varying acceptance rates for particular transactions. After identifying which gateway has a higher acceptance rate for which transaction, a merchant can route specific transactions to a particular gateway to maximize the transaction success rate. Multiple payment gateways will give a better buying experience to the customers and support the merchant during downtimes. By switching to the next preferred gateway, a business can ensure it gets paid.

6. Excellent Customer Impact

Having several payment gateways in place will provide a smoother shopping experience for the customers. After searching and selecting the product to purchase, paying for it is the last stage when an integrated payment gateway gets activated. Giving a smooth payment process to the customers ensures that they complete their payment and do not leave the cart. 

Besides supporting payments, the gateway also acts as the face of a business. Good gateway systems provide customer support to both customers and merchants alike. This impacts the business reputation, boosts customer confidence, and finally boosts the conversion rate.

7. Streamlined Reconciliation Process

Multiple payment gateways enable merchants to route specific transactions to the most suitable gateways. For instance, they may route certain products to a particular gateway by default. It eases the payment reconciliation process when needed for different product lines and business departments.

Relying on a single integrated payment gateway is tricky. Unfortunately, online merchants are not immune to downtimes and outages. Every minute of eCommerce downtime leads to reputational and financial loss in the rapidly-growing business space. Therefore, integrating multiple payment gateways avoids such a situation and ensures operational continuity in any condition.