Receiving payments
ShopWired comes with a range of tools which facilitate accepting payments on your online store from your customers.
In addition to accepting payment from customers using a credit/debit card, you can also:
- Enable customers to pay using a PayPal account
- Allow customers to login to an Amazon account to use their stored payment details
- Accept payment through a finance method such as Klarna or Laybuy
- Allow customers to submit orders without payment, and pay you away from your website (known as 'offline payment')
Merchant accounts and payment gateways
The way that money makes its way from your customer's account to yours for a particular transaction is through something called a merchant account. If you're selling online, you need a merchant account to receive the money from your customers' cards.
A payment gateway is the system that allows customers to enter their credit/debit card details onto a website and authorise a transaction. It instructs the bank to transfer the money from your customer's bank account to your merchant account.
To receive payments online from your customers via a credit/debit card you'll need to have both a merchant account and payment gateway.
Many payment service providers provide both a merchant account and payment gateway combined (like PayPal, Stripe or SagePay). However some payment gateways don't provide a merchant account and you'll need to obtain one separately (for example, from your bank).
Adding payment gateways to your ShopWired account
Once you've opened an account with a payment gateway, you can then add it to your ShopWired account to enable it on your online store by following the instructions here.
ShopWired supports around 40 different payment gateways in total. You can view a full list of them here.
You can enable more than one payment gateway on your ShopWired account to give your customers a choice of how they pay you.
PayPal Express Checkout
PayPal is a popular payment method of choice for millions of customers both in the UK and internationally. Some customers prefer to pay by PayPal because it's quicker (they've already entered their payment method), and/or because they trust the PayPal brand and the added protection they get as a buyer. PayPal also offers a finance option to customers called PayPal Credit.
We'd always recommend enabling PayPal on your online store as an additional payment method for your customers to use.
Amazon Pay
Amazon Pay works similar to PayPal (although is less well known) and allows customers to login to an Amazon account to select one of their saved addresses and saved cards to complete their transaction quicker.
You can read more about Amazon Pay here.
Finance Providers
Some payment service providers that ShopWired integrates with provide finance to customers on your behalf. You will receive the full amount of the money, but the customer will pay the payment provider in monthly payments.
ShopWired integrates with two finance providers, Klarna and Laybuy.
Offline Payment
Offline payment allows your customers to submit orders on your store without paying immediately. Instead, the order is submitted and becomes an order (for you to manage) like any other order.
Customers will then pay you away from your website, e.g. by bank transfer, telephone or cheque.
You can specify payment instructions for customers using this payment method, configure a different order confirmation email, and manage who has access to this payment method.