Some of the best digital payment systems
A business needs to be able to send and receive money by definition, and in today’s fast moving world,
it’s pretty hard to get by with the old methods of payment, especially when you’re just starting out or
you’re in the tech/mobile/Internet field. Fortunately, there are plenty of services that have developed as a consequence of the need for faster, easier methods of money transfer between buyers and sellers.
Whether you have a large business that is getting into a new market, a new small business or a fast
growing startup, or even if you’re just a freelancer working on his/her own – here are a few digital
payment systems/services that can really help you work with your clients faster and easier, at least
when it comes to money matters:
PayPal
PayPal is pretty much the most important payment processor when it comes to small direct transactions. With over 200 million users around the world, using PayPal is pretty much a prerequisite if you want to sell anything online. It’s easy to open an account, whether it’s personal or for your business, and getting started is as easy as registering your bank account and credit card, and placing a code on your site.
Square
Square is the new kid on the block, but it’s already proving to be quite a great service. It lets you process credit card payments with ease, and the fees are very reasonable, as well. Most importantly, the service puts a lot of work into their API, making it perfect for pretty much any site, and making it easy to implement, very flexible, secure and fast – the best on the market, in fact. If you need a highly integrated payment processor, this could be it.
Google Checkout/Wallet
Google Checkout started out as a simple credit card processor, but it has grown into something much better with Wallet. Google Wallet is for the buyer end, while Checkout is used by sellers. With Google’ service, you can process credit card payments easy and quick, but you’ll have to wait before you have access to funds, as they’re held by Google for two weeks at least before being deposited to your bank account.
2Checkout.com
2Checkout is another popular payment gateway online, and in a lot of ways it’s even better than PayPal. You can use it to accept credit card payments, as well as PayPal and other methods. The service has its own shopping platform, which is easy to use, and thanks to the extensive API you can easily integrate it with pretty much any existing site (plus, most e-commerce software already support sit from the get-go).
Authorize.net
Authorize.net has been on the market since 1996, and provides businesses and individuals with merchant accounts and credit card processing. Opening an account is not as easy as with the other services, but you get a full-fledged merchant account, with a lot of features and lower fees – if you’re doing large transactions online, you should definitely try it out.
If you need to send or receive payments directly from your customers and don’t want to go through
the agonizing “traditional” way of getting a merchant account with a bank, or simply can’t afford to use
antiquated systems, using one or better yet, several, of the above services should solve the problem, at
least until you get big (really big, actually). With the above services, receiving money for your products and paying your suppliers/contractors/employees can be as easy as clicking a few buttons!
