Web, mobile, and app payment gateways all come with an extensive set of pros. That doesn’t mean they’re perfect and that allow a payment facilitation, so there is a solid reason to dig deeper into their feature set.
The convenience features of a Payment Gateway make it easy to overlook a few of the cons. It’s still an incredible technology to have as a business, but don’t overlook the few downsides. Here are some of the noticeable cons of the most popular payment gateways.
5] Some Features Are Not Needed
Your payment gateway will come packed with features that you’ll probably never use. This is great if there is only one tier of service to choose from. It becomes a problem when there are separate tiers with their own set prices.
Unless the tiers are customizable, you will always end up with a payment gateway that has some of the features you want to be mixed in with a few that you don’t want to pay for. This leads to companies defaulting to the highest tier and getting everything in one package.
4] Holds Are Inevitable
Payment gateways are great at avoiding the delays and holds that cost your business money. Unfortunately, there is nothing they can do about a hold from the banking side. This is a banking issue and is out of the hands of your company and the payment gateway.
The good news is that banking holds are usually a waiting game until it clears up from the customer’s end. The bad news is that blame is often placed on the payment gateway and the company during this entire process.
By having a middleman (payment gateway) handling the money, you become more open to criticism when transactions have issues.
3] Settlements Can Take Forever
On the rare chance that a payment gateway makes a mistake, settlements can take ages to process. As usual, this time varies based on the provider, but it is still something that requires a lot of reading.
A small company will need to stay in contact with the payment gateway until things are fully resolved. Settlement terms should always be looked over fully before committing to a company.
2] Everyone Has A Different Fraud Procedure
This is one of those cons that won’t affect everyone in the business. Fraud procedures are different for each provider and are generally a hands-off type of feature. With a growing list of web technologies, you may be required to turn a feature ‘on’ in the settings.
Sometimes this isn’t clear, and you can spend months using a payment gateway without additional protection. Look through all advanced features to see if there is something that needs to be activated.
1] Changing Payment Gateways
Changing a service of any kind isn’t easy. Cloud-based services are generally a few clicks before you’re all set up. Payment gateways are universally hard to switch without a small complication or headache.
Asking the provider upfront about switching won’t really help, as changing providers is always a trial and error process. If the hardware is involved, expect extra steps to make things compatible.
Wrap Up
Despite some of the flaws, payment gateways are still the star of the show. The cons listed don’t define every single product on the market. Find out the strengths and weaknesses of each to make an informed decision for your business.
