Starting an Online Business All-in-One For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

Offering Alternative Payment Options

You might think that credit cards have a hold on the online shopping market. Indeed, the majority of customers prefer paying that way. Yet online security concerns and the demand for flexibility are driving the need for alternative options.

You receive a definite benefit when you expand your customers' payment choices. Online stores that offer only credit cards as a payment source can still get a substantial number of their visitors to purchase something. But by adding PayPal or eChecks, you can sometimes boost that conversion rate by as much as 20 percent.

Gaining more customers by being flexible is a no-brainer, as they say. As luck would have it, you can offer customers more than a handful of alternative payment solutions:

• PayPal: One of the most popular alternatives is allowing customers to pay by using a PayPal account. PayPal offers many options and is already widely recognized. If you already have a payment gateway, you can add PayPal Express Checkout to your Web site. As a bonus, your customers' billing and shipping information that's stored with PayPal is automatically used on your site so that they don't have to reenter information on future visits. To start using this option, go to www.paypal.com.
• Google Checkout: Not to be outdone by PayPal or any other provider, Google developed its own payment solution called Google Checkout. Similar to PayPal, Google Checkout makes it easy for your customers to make purchases online using stored, ...