Hosted payment page vs. self-hosted payment page: which checkout is best for your business?

Did you know the average documented online shopping cart abandonment rate is now 70.22%? The figure comes from the Baymard Institute.

Seven out of ten shoppers who were interested enough to add something to their cart just leave. Even if statistics are exaggerated a bit, it doesn’t mean that six or five out of ten customers’ figures would make it much better.

There are other studies that have been done to uncover why it is happening, but we want to focus on 2 things: the checkout experience itself and customers’ trust in providing their financial information. Many of the reasons for abandoning payment at the end of the day are connected to these two things.

Which brings merchants to a decision: hosted vs. self-hosted payment page? Each has its own upsides and downsides, and for a specific checkout flow, merchants usually need to choose between them.

What is a hosted payment page?

Before we can properly explain the difference between hosted vs. self-hosted payment page let us explain how both function.

A hosted payment page redirects your customer away from your website, or sometimes opens as an embedded payment form, to a secure payment page managed by your payment service provider (PSP).

You have seen this before: on some websites, you have the option to pay, let’s say, using PayPal. After clicking it, you are redirected to another page.

The customer enters their card details there, the transaction is processed, and they are sent back to your site.

For a merchant, this could be a winning move, especially for new business – you are not just outsourcing the hard parts but also reducing the PCI compliance / PCI DSS headache.

Yes, with a hosted payment page, much of the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard burden shifts to the payment provider, as long as the payment flow is fully handled by a PCI DSS-compliant third party.

You don’t touch the payment data, so your PCI DSS scope is much smaller, although you are not completely out of the compliance zone. Plus, integration is usually fast, and you can often be up and running, accepting payments in days, depending on onboarding and provider checks.

Overall, the hosted payment page is a good tool for the right place. It usually fits a new business better when the payment provider not only offers an easy-to-go setup for payments but also serves as a reliable anchor – when people don’t know you, they at least know they’re paying via a legitimate payment gateway.

What is a self-hosted payment page?

A self-hosted payment page, also called server-to-server payment or API payment integration, works differently.

It does not redirect your customer anywhere. Your server communicates directly with the payment provider’s server in the background. The customer stays on your site the entire time and will probably never know which payment gateway you use.

For brands where the checkout experience is part of the product, this is the obvious choice.

You control much more: the UI, design, and many technical details. You can build the exact checkout experience your brand demands without the same constraints imposed by a third-party template. You can call it white-label if you want, but you have much more freedom and control than that term implies.

But where there is control, there is responsibility. Because raw card data may touch your servers, you’re on the hook for a much heavier PCI DSS compliance scope.

Isolating the cardholder data environment, encryption, implementing multi-factor access, maintaining continuous monitoring – this is all on you, at least in the compliance zone, even if you find a good provider.

By using a self-hosted payment gateway or server-to-server payment integration, you can usually get much more freedom to:

• Build custom payment routing based on geography;

• Set different payment methods for customers based on country, currency, device type, or customer segment;

• Use tokenization and saved cards;

• Build in-app payments;

• Support one-click purchases and many more.

Hosted vs. self-hosted checkouts: key differences

Feature	Hosted payment page	Self-hosted payment gateway
User experience	Redirects to provider’s secure page	100% native on your own website
Design customization	Limited to basic branding/logos	Unlimited (full control over custom checkout UI)
PCI Compliance scope	Low (handled entirely by the PSP)	High (merchant bears full security responsibility)
Time to market	Fast (often ready out-of-the-box)	Slower (requires technical engineering)
Best suited for	SMBs, startups, non-technical teams	Enterprise, scaling platforms, SaaS brands

Which checkout integration is best for your business?

Choose a hosted payment page if:

You’re a small- to medium-sized business that wants to start accepting payments quickly. You don’t yet know how successful your sales business will be, and fast, low-budget payment integration will be the best bet for you.

The hosted payment page doesn’t require a dedicated IT department.

Also, PCI compliance / PCI DSS would affect you much less directly, because the payment provider handles the sensitive payment data. It is just a simple way to start a new product without needing to invest in a custom checkout stack.

Genome’s hosted payment page is already available for merchants that want an easy-to-set-up hosted checkout for accepting instant bank payments via Open Banking, with more payment methods, such as card payment processing, coming soon.

With Genome’s hosted payment page, your customers complete the purchase through a redirect to a secure external checkout link. They are redirected to a separate web page to finalize the payment, while your business gets access to a simpler payment setup without having to build the entire checkout flow from scratch.

To start using hosted pages for your business online, open a merchant account with Genome.

Choose a self-hosted payment gateway if:

You have an IT department or at least one person with developer skills. You’ll need people capable of maintaining API payment integration and a handle on your compliance posture.

If you are a large-scale business, relying solely on the hosted payment page can start to feel limiting, especially when checkout is part of your conversion strategy.

Think of premium e-commerce, high-volume subscription businesses, or any checkout where a redirect would feel off-brand. Imagine you are visiting Amazon for the first time, and you are redirected to another website. That would be weird at best and very suspicious at worst.

But the payoff is much more ownership of the payment experience and a more controlled payment flow.

Genome’s self-hosted payment page is coming soon. It is designed for merchants who want to keep the payment form and user flow on their own website while sending transaction data securely via API.

Conclusion

The hosted vs. self-hosted payment page decision isn’t really about which one is “better” – it’s about where your business is right now.

Both can be secure. Both work. The difference lies in who carries the technical and compliance burden and how much control you need over what your customers see before they pay.

Ideally, you want to start with a hosted page, gain a foothold in the market, and only then scale up to a self-hosted/integrated payment gateway, a server-to-server payment setup, or an API payment integration.

Genome covers both sides of that equation. Whether you need a hosted payment page you can launch quickly or a self-hosted payment page built for scale, the choice depends on your current resources and growth plans. Genome’s hosted payment page is already available for merchants that want a secure, ready-made checkout for accepting payments online, while Genome’s self-hosted payment page / API payment integration is coming soon for businesses that want deeper checkout control.

Open a Genome business account and start with what fits today – you can always switch between payment page options.