Multiple payment gateways allow streamlined and frictionless payment process for customers. Through different gateways of their reference with wide spectrum of payment options, Customers can have the convenience of currency options across all the countries, which will in turn help expansionthe eCommerce business at international level.

Payment gateway provides multiple payment options that supports payment via cards,net banking, wallets, international cards, EMI, IVR payments, etc. It also offers mobile technology and payments on Android phones and many features in one check out process with high levels security. Some customers may like to make payments based on their credit points and some other may like Automated Clearing House (ACH) or mobile shopping. Thus, multiple payment gateways let you customise more payments for more customers. Single payment gateway that offers various payment options and features might not support all currencies, all payment modes with cost effective transaction charges and for multiple countries. So, more than one payment gateway enhances comprehensivefunctionality, reliability, higher conversion rates with ease of convenience to customers with simple check out process.

Multiple payment gateways integration in e commerce is more advantageous considering the following aspects.

Good customer experience

Tedious check out process after all customer searches and when the products have been finalized for purchase may lead to cart abandonment. This affects customer's revisit. So, ease of user experience with multiple payment gateways and features allows customers to choose their favoured payment gateway. They will have better and easy payment process. For example, payment process in PayPal is as simple with just e mail id without need of any other details. If business will not facilitate accepting payment as per customer preference and demand, it may lead to long latency time for approvals, which will in turn result in transaction declines that will damage good will and trust. As per the Voucher cloud study of eCommerce Psychology, 59% of interested customers purchasing the product will abandon the transaction if their preferred payment method is not available, which is not always simple with a single gateway.

Increased geographic coverage

If your business expands over countries, multiple payment gateways help you to handle payments in different currencies and brings sales over borders. Each country may have their own payment mode like in India UPI is the most preferred payment mode. Some gateways accept UPI and some may accept payment mode which is applicable to specific country that locals know and are comfortable using. Convenience and trust increase when customers can purchase products and services in their local currency.So, a gateway that can convert your website’s currency into local ones makes the checkout process more convenient. Multiple payment gateways provide customers, a comfort of payment through gateways that they well know and thus increases trust value.For example, PayPal is most preferred in the United States, Europe and Australia. While MPesa is huge in many countries in Africa, and credit cards are the top option in the United States.

Reliability during downtime

Downtime is bound to happen once in a while. However, the payment gateway might be good, during which customer might experience trouble to complete their purchase. According to a study conducted by Finance Magnates, 62% of customers, who experienced a failed transaction will not return to the website to make another purchase intent. Many platforms experience downtime due to technical failure or tweaked for maintenance causing thousands of failed transactions for merchants that don't offer different payment alternatives to their customers.

In some occasions, gateways might fail to process the payment as a result of sales overload. One way in which merchants can avoid these scenarios which cause them to lose revenue is to offer multiple payment gateways and have a backup plan for the one that experience downtime.

Customer data security and trust value

Customers data security is the top most priority of any e commerce site. The Baymard Institute survey showed 19% of customers have abandoned their carts because they didn’t trust a site to have their credit card information. But multiple payment gateways signals to customers that you’re trustworthy. The trust attributed to specific companies like PayPal is transferred to you through simple association and brand image that creates a sense of perceived trust to your customers. If customers don’t recognise your gateway, they’re less likely to trust it. The more payment gateways you use, the higher the level of perceived professionalism, legitimacy, and trust.

Decline rates and latency levels

if your business expands internationally, a need to process payments in multiple currencies becomes essential. Transaction decline and latency rates are the two important factors that need to be considered that affects the lifetime value of a customer. For a gateway, it performs well for a currency, that does not necessarily suggest that it will perform well for other currencies. So, success rates and latency levels for a currency differ with payment gateways.

Connecting to multiple gateways allows flexibility to your business to choose which payment gateway makes most sense for each currency at the level you expect with successful transactions to maximise the volume of successful transactions across markets and can switch over to another if performance erodes over time.

Latency level is the time required for a transaction to be completed. Long latency to complete a transaction may frustrate a customer feeling something has gone wrong. This results in abandonment of cart and they may never like to revisit. So, it is impractical to select a single gateway provider to service all the currencies. The gateways that have low latency rates in one currency are seldom top performers in other currencies.

Conclusion

Multiple payment gateways allow you to have more payment options for more customers and apart from that it acts as an each other's backup during downtime so that one need not shut business until the problem is sorted out. When you have multiple gateways, you have multiple contracts, integrations, and setup so one has to study the pros and cons of payment gateways and choose best possible combination. For a business with customers from other countries or high sales volume, multiple payment gateways secure more purchases than with single payment options.