Pros and cons of using multiple payment gateways on your website

The analytics and insights provided by payment gateways can help you in identifying customer shopping patterns and making informed business decisions.

For instance, a payment gateway can show you categorized data of your customers based on their age, gender, location, and other parameters within their scope of knowledge.

You get multiple sets of data to analyze when your website has multiple payment gateways.



Banks and payment applications often face downtime. This sudden service disruption can affect their customers and it often happens unannounced. Customers have to postpone their purchases or wait for an undetermined amount of time.

Due to this, the business faces more loss than the customer if the customer cancels the order altogether.

By providing them options, you give them a backup to use an alternative payment method if they have temporary issues with their other banking options.



Customers should feel safe sharing their sensitive banking information with you. There are some payment gateways that are PCI compliant that safeguard your customers’ data.

By adding multiple payment methods that are safe to transact through, you make your customer understand that only encrypted information is sent out of your network.



Your payment shouldn’t get affected when there are technical or banking issues with the payment gateway. Many customers are unable to place their orders at the end of the payment gateway stage when their payment request fails.

It can disappoint the customer and by having multiple payment gateways, you can convince them to give one more try with another solution to ensure smooth transactions.



No business ever wants to remain just a brick-and-mortar store serving a limited number of customers. Only when you break the borders and start selling nationally and internationally, can you see impressive sales results.

Multiple payment gateways are a prerequisite when you desire to sell to customers beyond boundaries.



A study by Baymard institute state that 19% of cart abandonment happens when the customer doesn’t feel safe enough to share their bank account details. Customers don’t feel safe when they purchase from random eCommerce sites.

Having multiple payment methods helps them not use their banking information everywhere and use safe one-time payment options like wallets or credit cards.

It instills a sense of security of trust in customers’ minds when they are given more than one payment gateway.



Multiple payment gateways don’t just support uninterrupted payments. Customers also use it to find out what brings them the best convenience and fx rates amongst the given options.

Nothing impresses a customer more than saving some money while spending it. You can be the reason for that.



Not all countries use the same payment modes. They differ from country to country and most of them have their local payment gateways which they frequently use due to the cash-back offers and instant regional support.

When you research and include them on your website, you give an opportunity to your customers to utilize their high rewards expense cards.

Including payment options in every region that you operate makes your customers feel encouraged to purchase. So, every visitor will be sure to spend and that leads to increased conversion rates and revenue.



Customers don’t go to an online store only for buying products. The overall experience you offer to them can convince even a visitor who isn’t keen on buying anything in the first place.

Anybody can sell the same solutions you sell. But the efforts you take to make the shopping sprint convenient for them matter.

Multiple payment gateway integrations are the extra mile you take to elevate the customer experience and stand out from the crowd.

Let’s not forget that multiple payment gateway integration requires complicated technical and IT resources and expertise to do it correctly.

Your current IT team might not be equipped with the knowledge or tools required to carry on with these operations. It also demands some time for implementation and testing that can cause a dip in your sales and web visitor count.



Operational challenges begin when your multiple payment gateways become functional. Delays and payment rejections are very common in online payments and this is the reason why most customers contact a merchant right after placing their order.

One frequent case is when a customer’s payment will be debited from their end but not received in your accounts. But integrations are complicated and a little delay is possible, which the customer might find difficult to comprehend.

All these challenges swell when you have multiple payment gateways for your business where you have to answer on behalf of many payment gateway vendors.



As you are going to collaborate with more than one payment gateway vendor, you will be required to go through their privacy policies and other documentation to sign up with them and continue using their service.

It also means that you will be maintaining many documents from your side and storing them for as long as you are partnering with them.



Integration with multiple payment gateways isn’t available free of cost. There are processing fees that have to be paid and also the fee for technical setup and integration that a business should bear.

The cost of getting a merchant account with payment gateway vendors along with processing charges can escalate very quickly if you deal with multiple gateways.



Volume pricing is an advantage merchants get from payment vendors. When their payment gateways are used more frequently, merchants can pay less to the payment gateway platforms.

When there is only one payment gateway, every payment will be routed through that accounting for heavy gateway platform usage.

But with multiple payment gateways, the sales get split among them leading to heavy charges from all the platforms.



If your company doesn’t have smart data processing tools, you will have to manually ensemble customer data provided by different payment gateways.

This process can be tiresome and lengthy and also can lead to faulty insights and perceptions. So, gauging your overall performance and getting your hands on customers’ records will become a convoluted task.

If you get no returns from your investment, then it’s not worth investing in at all. If you decide to set up multiple payment methods, find a cost-effective solution that won’t send you a heavy bill every month.

There are gateway providers that provide discounts on merchant fees and get low processing charges for every transaction that happens through it.



Your accountants would be manually updating the payment information, status, customer details, and others into the bookkeeping system if the payment gateway won’t integrate with a common bookkeeping application.

Hence, choose multiple payment gateways with auto-integration options so that payment status, rebates and refunds, and other details get automatically synced with your accounting system.



Having multiple payment gateways is excellent to improve customer experience. But if you can go beyond the call of duty and provide them with more payment modes, your customers will surely feel pleased.

Different customers have different opinions and preferences toward payment options. Presenting them with a wide array of payment gateways that support all kinds of modes from cards to UPI is the way to cater to a wider audience.



The success rate depends on how seamless the payment gateway is for the customer to process a transaction without disruptions. Customers don’t prefer gateways that are notorious for frequent cancellations, rigid UX, and long processing times.

Having such a payment gateway is a loss for you and instead, you can go for payment partners with neat success rate scores.



PCI DSS compliance makes a payment gateway eligible for storing customers’ banking information safely and securely to process recurring payments in the future.

This way, customers don’t have to initiate transactions every month for subscription costs.

Both business and personal shoppers make monthly subscription-based payments. Payment gateways with PCI compliance can foster this.



The payment gateway should be easily accessible and easy to use for both customers and your team (to receive the customer payments and work on backend integrations).

Payment gateways with confusing UI and complicated processes are a disappointment and a pain.



If your customer faces an issue with multiple payment gateway integrations, the support team will be the first point of contact.

You should be able to contact them any time and get it fixed within reasonable hours. Issues related to banking (even for a very few hours) can bring your revenue down and have a serious impact on your sales.