Business services
Merchant account for e-commerce: what to set up before your first sale
Launching an online store is an exhilarating milestone. You have sourced your products, refined your branding, and built a sleek storefront that you are proud to show off. But before you launch your marketing campaigns and welcome your very first visitor, there is one critical behind-the-scenes system that deserves your undivided attention: your payment infrastructure. Your checkout needs a reliable way to accept payments. Setting up your merchant account for e-commerce before launch can help prevent payment problems and delays. Knowing how to set up a merchant account also helps you prepare the documents and website details your provider needs.
Business services
Cards vs. Pay by Bank: Which payment methods should your checkout offer?
Getting an online shopper from discovery to your checkout page takes real effort. You have spent time, budget, and creative energy building an intuitive website, marketing your inventory, and earning the visitor’s trust. Yet studies consistently show that nearly 70% of online shopping carts are abandoned before completion. A major culprit behind this friction is a checkout that fails to offer the shopper’s preferred way to pay. Debit and credit cards have long been a familiar way to pay online. Now, alternative payment methods give shoppers more choice. One option is Pay by Bank, which lets customers pay directly from
Business services
Chargebacks: how the dispute process works and what merchants must provide
The chargeback dispute process is an inevitable part of any online merchant’s work. Sometimes people want their money back, a product lacks quality, shipping goes wrong, or fraud occurs – and for a merchant, it is nothing special. What matters is how they get their money back: a refund when a merchant initiates it, or a chargeback when the bank forcibly cancels the purchase and returns the money. Either way, merchants lose sales, but chargebacks cost an extra fee and count against your chargeback rate, which matters a lot in parts. The chargeback dispute process is another topic entirely: any
Business services
How to accept card payments on your website: step-by-step for EU merchants
How do you set up your payment infrastructure in Europe today? Is it already a single economic entity, or will it be in the future? Which currencies to use? How strict are the regulations? Our team will explain how it all works and how to accept card payments on your website. There are currently many payment methods across the EU that people use – digital wallets and direct bank transfers are rapidly growing as an alternative to card payments. Card networks Visa and Mastercard are holding nearly half of European payments, and the digital Euro – an EU competitor in
Business services
Payment methods European customers expect at checkout
Selling across Europe can help your e-commerce business reach more customers, but payment preferences vary from country to country. Even within the EU’s single market, shoppers have their own preferred ways to pay. A checkout that works well in Paris may need different payment options to suit customers in Amsterdam, Warsaw, or Stockholm. To successfully scale across borders, digital merchants must look beyond generic payment configurations. Offering the precise payment methods European customers expect at checkout is one of the most effective levers for driving your checkout conversion rate and reducing your cart abandonment rate. The fragmented landscape of European
Business services
Payment webhooks: integrating real-time pay-in notifications
Using payment webhooks can significantly improve your company’s operational flow. Some platforms use API polling – one of the standard payment models that works by asking the payment gateway’s API about the payment status. How do payment webhooks work? Technically, instead of repeatedly asking a payment provider for updates, a merchant’s backend receives an HTTP notification the moment an event occurs. In other words, if API polling is asking for confirmation every 10 seconds, webhooks are like requesting: “Notify me the moment the payment arrives.” This isn’t a perfect analogy, but it gives you a sense of what is going
Business services
Merchant accounts for digital goods and online services: managing risk and instant delivery
Selling non-physical products is a newer form of selling in general, presenting unique challenges. Primarily, you need to deal with the buyers’ expectations. Because your product exists in a digital form, people expect to access it immediately after purchasing, whether it is downloadable software, digital media, e-learning courses, or SaaS platform tools. To be able to deliver on your promises to customers as soon as possible, you need a payment infrastructure that can support fast international payments. You also require a merchant account for digital goods, which can help you protect your revenue, eliminate checkout friction, and scale across borders
Business services
Demystifying PCI DSS for merchants: what you actually need depending on your integration
When it comes to accepting credit card payments online, PCI DSS for merchants is one of the most frequently misunderstood topics in the e-commerce industry. Business owners, CTOs, and payment operations managers often assume it is a strict government law or statutory regulation. In reality, the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is an industry security standard established by the major payment card schemes: Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, and JCB. It is governed and maintained by the independent body known as the PCI Security Standards Council (PCI SSC). Because it is not a legal statute, you will
Business services
What to look for in a European payment provider before you integrate
Selecting a payment provider is one of the most critical operational decisions for an online business, scale-up, or enterprise platform. European businesses lean more toward choosing a European payment provider as their primary choice. But the payment landscape in the EU is unique: it is controlled by strict, evolving regulations like PSD2 and DORA, and payment infrastructure has been fragmented until recent political decisions to achieve sovereignty in the European payment landscape. Today, we’re seeing a rapid shift from card networks, which are mostly of non-European origin, to real-time account-to-account (A2A) payments. How to choose the right partner in this