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Web payments. What do you need to know?
Nov 14, 2023
6 minutes
Contents
Usually, people’s knowledge about payments is limited, but actually there are a lot of scenarios. I will briefly go through each of the stages so that you, as a business owner, have an absolutely clear picture when you connect payment on your website. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to ask them — we are always open to dialogue.
Max
CEO
How to accept payments?
What fears do customers have when paying with a credit card on the site?
How to pay money to users?
What are the types of payments?
Why do you need to know this? Well, for example, one of our clients wanted to create a marketplace, and was about to hire an additional accountant to deal with client payments — we proposed a different scenario. What scenario? Find out further.
We pay for the order on the website
Usually, we click pay, go to a third-party service page, enter credit card details or use apple pay, and get charged.
You can also find widgets for payment systems — after clicking the “make a payment” button, a window pops up directly on the site, you enter the credit card details, get the SMS code, get charged, and the window closes — the payment is made.
Do not forget that here and further, even before the development stage, it is always worth connecting testers so that they go through all possible scenarios and foresee any difficulties that your customers may have when depositing money. After all, this is a very sensitive topic that is significant even for very experienced users. Just imagine how worried they would be if the window didn’t close, or the life-affirming “payment was successful” didn’t pop up, the frightening “session finished” appeared, and it’s not clear what to do next. Let us make your service as convenient and comfortable as possible so people will come back to you.
For example payment links. This method also takes place at some medium-sized businesses. It is being formed personally, for every specific order and sent to the user in any way convenient for him.
Personally, my favorite way is to link a card. You can enter the data once and forget about it forever. I did this with Dodo pizza on their website. Sometimes I even order there, rather than somewhere else, because my card is already linked there, and I don’t need to enter anything.
But what if my payment data “leaks” to the network?
Regarding fears about personal data theft, I’m glad to reassure you: websites do not store it. To do this, they would need to pass the PCI DSS certification (which is very expensive). This makes no business sense to them, as all needed credit card data is stored in the payment system itself, which guarantees security. For example, in our projects, we store only hash in our database, and pull the data for payment from it.
Therefore, do not be afraid that your payment data will be leaked.
Mobile app payment
The same scenarios are used for mobile applications. With only one BUT. You redirect a client from the application to the website for payment or verification. Therefore, all operations must take place in the app. The application calls the browser, it opens inside the webview and you complete all the payment actions. For example, Apple does not allow placing an application in the store if the funds write-off occurs according to another scenario.
What are the types of payments?
1
Subscriptions (recurring payments, autopayments) — the card is tied and payoffs occur at a certain time and/or a certain amount.
2
Holding (some people call it a “safe deal”) is the blocking of the X amount from the user, which can be charged off/unlocked after a specific action made by the user/manager. A very popular payment method mostly used in the marketplaces. There is a seller who puts his product and a buyer who needs to receive the product and confirm that this is exactly what was stated by the seller. After that, the held amount will be sent to the seller’s account. Car rentals also operate when a deposit is required.
3
Splitting. Also a popular scenario for marketplaces. When the buyer has paid a certain amount — 20% of it goes to the platform, and 80% — the seller. The most correct option is to distribute money immediately upon receipt of the transaction. The same scenario is used when a user buys products from several suppliers at once on the same website. Consequently, you, as the owner of the marketplace, will receive only net profit on your account.
This is great, but I know that some people prefer to receive all money to their account, conduct some financial operations with them and pay suppliers only once a month. In this case, it will be possible to earn more interest from the bank.
4
Installment payments. Thanks to the financial capabilities of payment systems, for example in Russia, platforms began to offer to pay for the products and services with installments directly on the website, without contacting banks.
But what if the money should not be received, but paid?
1
Mass payouts. For example — you are an exchange service, people work on your platform for a month, and earn some money. At the end of the month, you need to pay them all off. Payment systems are now able to pay to different channels (for example, when someone has a credit card attached, someone has PayPal, someone has a bank account — you upload a list for enrollment, and the system sends funds to everyone to his preferred channel, of course not forgetting the commission of each).
2
P2P payments (transfer from one card to another). They work essentially like a linked card. The funniest scenario is to tip the waiter when you don’t have any cash with you. On the one hand, you need to charge the money, on the other hand, to send them accordingly. To write off the funds, we use one of the scenarios described above. For enrollment, depending on the chosen payment provider, you either simply enter your card number, or link the card, and the platform will ensure the storage of the hash. For example, we created a personal account for waiters, where they could enter their card details in order to receive accrued funds.
3
Returns. It is important to pay attention to this scenario, especially when choosing a provider. The returns mechanism is also important on the development stage. Therefore, this issue must also be thought out both at the prototyping stage and when calculating the development time, also taking needed integrations into account.
If you need advice, feel free to contact us. Perhaps you are far from it now, but in the future it will allow you to optimize your business by automating it.
