A good service to provide your customers is a way for them to be able to pay their bill online. You can send them an invoice and then include a simple website address to go to where they can pay their invoice right on your website. It's fairly easy to do and secure. You also get payments faster!
If you're a non-profit organization, you can take donations online. It's a great way to make it easy for people to make donations. Online payments are easy for people to make and you'll collect more donations if people can go to your website to make a donation. You can even set up a monthly / recurring payment if you like - kind of like a subscription.
Here are a few examples of payment and donation forms/pages we've set up for our clients (all links open in a new window):
Customers are able to pay their invoices online, make a loan payment, make a donation or even sign up for a monthly subscription (with an optional free trial period).
Here's a sample (an image - not functional) of an online payment form we use on our website:
We've done several kinds of payment pages and we can do virtually any kind of online payment that you need done.
To get this set up, we'll need to take a look at your website and see what software it's running. It's fairly easy to do with WordPress websites but we've done payment pages on other types of websites, too. We've even done stand-alone payment forms, which means they're not connected with the software that runs your website.
You'll then need a payment gateway and merchant account. If you're already taking credit cards at your location, then you already have a merchant account. If you haven't taken credit card payment online yet, then you'll need an online payment gateway. Basically, it connects the online world with the banking world (a gateway between them).
In real-time, it checks to make sure people have the money in their account. If they do, then it captures (authorizes) that amount. Later in the day, a batch process runs and the funds are then captured. The money then appears in your checking account either the next day or a day or two later (depending on your bank and merchant account).
If you don't have a merchant account yet, you'll need to apply for one so you can take cards like Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express. Optionally, we can set up payments via PayPal as well.
We can help you with this process and give you good advice to help things go smoothly.
If the payment form is on your website, then you'll need an SSL certificate on your website (to keep the transmission of data between the server and the website visitor encrypted) and you'll also have to make sure your website host is PCI Compliant. If you host your website with Webstix, we help you with PCI Compliance.
Here's a list of what is needed:
You'll also need experts, like Webstix, to put this all together and make it work!
A single page to collect payments is different than having an e-commerce website with a shopping cart. They're different systems and programming. You can have both if you like but just because you have one doesn't mean you have the other.
We can also help you set up a shopping cart with products on your website if you need that but it's separate from a payment page.
Getting into taking payment online can be a little tricky if you haven't done it before. Fortunately, we've done it for many clients - including ourselves. Contact Webstix today to find out more and let's get the process started!
