Online Payment Systems - Which Is Best?

Internet business on the worldwide web has put a major emphasis on online payments. Payment gateways for purchasing and other online monetary transactions have made this possible. Now these online payment gateways are the most preferred systems for transferring money.

These online payment gateways are companies that act as intermediaries between merchants and buyers. These online payment gateways allow customers to make payments for goods and services purchased with convenience. Some of these online payment gateways offer additional functions for the transfer of money, sending invoices, making payments for invoices, etc. online, through emails, mobile phones, etc. And on international transactions they provide currency exchange with minimal charges.

The reason for the increasing popularity of the online payment gateways are several: 1) ease of transfer or payment 2) very high security by encryption of all communiques and transactions 3) insurance that all transactions are guaranteed safe for customers.

The choice of a payment gateway is a very important part of online payment. Another very important factor is gateway compatibility. Any online payment that is compatible with only with a few other gateways automatically narrows its options. As a customer, you might not want to do business with a merchant or service provider whose online payment gateway is not compatible with the most popular systems.

Integrating an online payment system onto your website lets your visitors make purchases without problems. Here are some questions to ask before you take an online payment gateway system onto your website:

1. How soon are transactions handled? Clearing personal checks certainly takes longer than a credit card transaction or regular electronic money transfer from an already funded account.

2. What systems will the gateway operate compatibly with - Banks, credit cards, Western Union , American Express, other gateways?

3. Is every single approved transaction guaranteed, with reimbursement if there is a problem - or is there a long and inflexible negotiating process on problem transactions? 4) Security features - Does the system use digital signature? - which makes the system hacker proof even if the id is hacked.

5. Dynamic IP - security by checking the IP address used in the previous transactions by internet?

6. Does the system have 128-bit security by SSL ?- automatically encrypted?

Such payment gateway systems as Ebays' PayPal, Google's Checkout, Epay, and MoneyBookers.com all receive good marks from some of their customers. Sadly as with most primary companies the biggest ones get hacked first and most often. Microsoft Windows gets much more hacking than Apple, etc.

Because PayPal is the oldest and largest this in effect means PayPal is the first and major target of hackers. Besides the hacking, there are thousands of other scams going on whereby some cybercriminal sends out false emails trying to get ID information and security codes from customers worldwide. Many of these are very clever with amazing counterfeits of the payment website's graphics.

PayPal has also been targeted by several class action suits for some of their problems with customers. One problem is there sometimes unfair pushing of clients to use their system to the exclusion of other systems. Another is there very clumsy and arbitrary way of handling their security breeches - some of which resulted in the loss of funds of customers or freezing of customer accounts, instead of providing a good system for handling security and payment problems. And one other very disturbing problem, there frequent inability to provide good support to customers regarding these problems - which has left many customers with a bad experiences, loss of funds, and frozen accounts in which customers could not touch funds for months if at all.

One very good gateway payment system that has not suffered the major problems with security, scams, and customer support is Moneybookers . They provide all the basic services quickly easily and safely.

We can't but mention Nochex - independent UK based online payment company, specializing in providing smaller online businesses with simple and accessible online payment services. Established in late 1999, the company has been providing a secure and reliable electronic money payment service since the beginning of 2001. Nochex is the quick and easy way to collect payments funded by all major credit and debit cards from a website. It offers merchants two simple and affordable online payment accounts.

As you check out payment gateway systems for yourself as a customer or as a website merchant remember that no system is perfect. Each system has its own character, but it must be user-friendly to succeed for both merchant and buyer.