Imagine yourself going through the shopping process and finding exactly what you’re looking for — only to learn your preferred way to pay isn’t accepted when trying to check out. Frustrating right? So why put your customers through the same thing? The more ways you give customers to pay, the more customers you’ll find who are willing to. This guide to ecommerce payment options for your ebook store will help you create a more inclusive transaction environment for all of your shoppers. In many cases, it will also free you from the burden of accepting credit cards on your site and storing sensitive financial information.
Amazon Payments
Happily, you don’t have to be an Amazon merchant to take advantage of this service. However, you can benefit from all of the people who have signed up with Amazon to accept payments without having to require a raft of information about them. Even better, payments are processed on your site, so your customers aren’t redirected when it’s time to pay.
Bitcoin
The first peer-to-peer decentralized digital currency, Bitcoin is efficient and inexpensive, if unfamiliar to most mainstream consumers. Among its key advantages are extremely low fees and high security.
Dwolla
Ideal for customers who’d rather not use credit cards online, Dwolla connects directly to a bank account to transfer funds from a shopper’s bank to yours. This means your buyers can make purchases whether they have credit cards or not. All they need is an eligible bank account.
Google Wallet
Thanks to the ubiquitous Google sign-in, Google Wallet permits the acceptance of online payments with minimal registration by your customers. Google Wallet’s Instant Buy further accelerates the payment process for shoppers. You can create savable offers, as well as loyalty programs with the Wallet Objects API. Payment details are stored offsite, so you don’t have to worry about hackers raiding financial data from your site or servers.
MasterPass
While MasterPass does require you to accept MasterCard branded cards, the service can be used with all major credit cards. It works with an integrated digital wallet, from which your customer chooses to pay. Once the shopper completes the transaction, MasterPass transmits shipping and payment information back to you.
PayPal
The big dog in the payment gateway business, PayPal boasts some 137 million active registered accounts and over 30 million mobile customers in the U.S. alone. Represented in more than 193 markets and capable of working with more than 26 different currencies around the world, if you’re considering how to sell ebooks online, odds are your customers have a PayPal account. PayPal affords you the ability to produce and send invoices and it even offers shoppers six months of interest-free financing with the Bill Me Later option.
Visa Checkout
This Visa product is the next best thing to directly accepting credit cards on your site. Customers pay from their Visa accounts by entering their username and password and confirming payment details. It all happens inside your ebook store, so customers don’t have to deal with redirects.
These seven ecommerce payment options for your ebook store will make your transactions more secure and minimize the potential for compromised credit card data. It should be noted many of these options (like PayPal for example) require redirects to accomplish this, which could be an issue for some customers.
Of course, as one of the most trusted payment methods on the ‘net, people tend to know what expect from PayPal. However, the lesser-known entities might give the typical online customer something extra to think about when it’s time to pay.
