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Part 7: Apply for a Payment Gateway

Zuora

Part 7: Apply for a Payment Gateway

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Overview

Zuora Internal Documentation. This article is intended for Zuora only. Do not share or distribute publicly.

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A critical piece of the billing and commerce puzzle is signing up with a payment gateway. These are the companies that will help you connect your virtual shopping cart or virtual terminal/point-of-sale (POS) to the payments infrastructure that facilitates payments made with either a credit card company or bank network. 

The trick is, there are many gateway providers to choose from. Zuora has pre-integrated with the most popular gateways on the market. So which one is right for you? Like many things, it depends on your requirements.

Solution

Choosing the right gateway depends on a number of factors. Providers differ in several dimensions, from rates charged and fee structures, to countries and currencies they serve, to the number of additional services they offer, to the level of effort required to get them up and running.

What Features Do You Need?

We often find that smaller companies don't need a lot of fancy features; they just want to pay a fair rate and get up and running quickly to start processing credit cards. As companies grow and start to expand internationally, they consider switching or signing up with another processor for international customers. As you start getting into higher volumes, it can be to your advantage to shop around for better rates and to start looking into additional features like credit card updaters or fraud and chargeback protection. One of the key advantages of working with Zuora is that you have the flexibility to quickly switch gateways and processors as your needs change. You also have the flexibility of using more than one payment gateway. For example, you might want to use one payment gateway for customers based in the United States and another payment gateway for International customers.

Zuora can talk you through the right option for your company to help you get the most value while keeping down costs. 

Getting Started with Payment Gateways

To get started, send an e-mail to selfhelp@zuora.com and provide your response to the following questions:

  • Where are you (the merchant) officially domiciled (which country)? For example: US, Canada, Netherlands, etc.
  • In which countries do you plan to sell your services?
  • What type of credit cards do you need to accept? For example: MasterCard, Visa, Discover, AmericanExpress.
  • What other payment methods do you need to accept? For example: PayPal, Direct Debit (ACH).
    • If Direct Debit, in which countries will you support direct debit? 
  • What currencies do you need to sell within? For example: USD, EUR, CAD, BRL, AUD, etc.
  • What currencies do you need to process payments in? 
  • What currencies do you payments to settle in? 
  • What other gateway functionality do you require? For example: Fraud services, AVS Checking, Chargeback Management.
  • Do you have charge back issues? What is your approximate rate of charge backs?
  • How much volume (revenue) do you expect to push through the gateway annually?
  • Do you process only card not present (internet/online) transactions or do you require card present (retail) transactions?

Zuora will evaluate your responses and provide you with a list of payment gateway and/or payment processing providers that meet your requirements. We will put you in touch with the right people at various providers to have follow on conversations. We recommend speaking directly with these providers to evaluate the best option for your business.

What's Next

When finished, briefly review the Additional Topics for Milestone 1.