Payment gateways are one of the most important functionalities of any e-commerce platform. Without a payment gateway, many online retailers would be unable to accept payments from customers. A payment gateway allows merchants to accept different types of payments from their customers securely and conveniently. Today, there are thousands of e-commerce platforms available, but only a few of them support payment gateways. Payment gateways are essentially online payment processing services that allow merchants to receive credit card and other financial transactions securely through an external service provider. This blog will cover the top use cases for having a payment gateway in your physical retail store as well as the advantages you can reap from it.

Point of Sale (POS) Terminal

Even if you know that 95% of your customers will prefer to shop online, having a physical store is still crucial to many businesses. This is because many customers are still interested in in-store shopping as they prefer to psychically check the products’ quality and material before making a purchase. By having a POS at your store, you can easily keep track of inventory, manage sales, automate your workflow and a lot more. Moreover, the main benefit of having an in-store POS is to accept various forms of payments, such as digital wallets, debit cards, and credit cards.

Online Payment Processing 

For an online store, you can also make use of the integration with a payment gateway to let customers make in-store pickup purchases on your store’s website. This will let you expand the reach of your online store to your store’s customers. Also it will help with the checkout experience and reducing the shopping cart abandonment, by providing a seamless user experience by enabling shoppers to complete a purchase on the merchant’s side. The users stay on the same page from the moment they add goods to the shopping cart until seeing the transaction’s successful status. Such an approach grows brand confidence and increases customer loyalty and satisfaction. 

Payment Links 

Integration of a payment gateway with a retail store will also facilitate the payment acceptance 

of client’s orders by sending them payment links to complete the purchasing process. It is a simple, fast and secure payment acceptance solution, as stores can send to their customers a payment link to their mobile via SMS or Email or even on their Whatsapp, which will enable them to make a purchase at their convenience at anytime, anywhere. You will be able to provide your customers with better experience and get paid in your local currency without the need for your customers’ physical presence, they’ll just choose to pay online through the link by choosing the option of paying with a credit or debit card. 

Pay with QR code to Save Time of In-store Queues

The traditional method is to let customers queue up at the cashier while they check out. However, if your store is large enough, this is time-consuming and you can only accept a limited number of customers at a time. That is when having a self-service checkout system comes in handy. In a self-service checkout, customers are encouraged to pay for the items they are checking out. Customers can also pay by credit card, so if you have a payment gateway integrated into your checkout system, you can accept various types of payments. Having a payment gateway integrated with your checkout system can be extremely useful when used to let customers pay for an item with a QR code. This way, customers do not have to wait in queues at the cashier and can instantly get out of the store. 

Written By: Nadeen Hamdy

Kashier’s Marketing Team

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