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Payment Gateways for South African e-Commerce websites

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If you run an e-commerce website or online service and want to accept credit card payments online, you need an account with an online payment gateway. But what is a payment gateway exactly and which one should you choose to help run your online business? 

How online payments work?

​There are typically two different services that the payment gateway will offer:

  • Option 1: A user shops on your online store. When the user is ready to check out he gets redirected to the payment gateway site to enter his credit card details. They process the payment and send the user back to your website. You do not store any credit card details.
  • Option 2: A user shops on your online store. When the user is ready to check out he pays on your website. In the background you store his credit card details and query the payment gateway. They send a response accepting or rejecting the payment. Then you finish off the transaction.

I’d advise you to choose option 1 as capturing and storing credit card information on your website can be too much of a security risk.
All payment gateways will accept credit cards or Mastercard and Visa cheque cards, and some payment gateways will also accept Debit cards (which require a PIN number) EFT and bitcoins.

5 Important questions to ask:

1. Does it support my home currency and country?
It is vitally important  that the gateway operates in your country. There are two separate but intertwined considerations when it comes to payment gateways: which currencies the gateway accepts, and which currencies it will pay out—that is, the countries in which it will work. A gateway may only work for merchants based in the USA, Canada, the UK, but can process payments from accepted credit cards no matter where that cardholder lives; many companies also offer currency conversion, so that international shoppers will see prices listed in their home currency instead of the default USD. Some gateways are US-only and will only accept US dollars.

2. What are the security standards?​
All companies which process, store, or transmit consumer credit card information must comply with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), and your chosen payment gateway should adhere to this at the very minimum. They may also offer advanced fraud protection, either for an extra fee or included in your service, and it’s important to pick a gateway with a good reputation and know how they will keep your data secure.

3. What is the payout policy?
Payment gateways act as an intermediary between the customer’s bank account and your own, ensuring that the money is available and that the transaction is successful. But the money won’t actually land in your account until the transaction is settled by both the issuing and acquiring bank, and that can take time to process. Payment gateways hold on to batches of money and pay out to you on a regular basis.

4. Do I need a merchant account?
Depending on the size of your business, you may need a dedicated merchant account; some gateways also only work if you have one. They are great for larger businesses and you have more control over your money, but the application process involves a credit check and can be lengthy and expensive.A merchant is a special bank account that holds the funds from debit and credit card sales. Separate from the business owner’s actual bank account, funds in the merchant account are held there until the end of the day, when they are transferred to the owner as a batch—otherwise, the business would be depositing money hundreds of times per day. Whenever you pay with a debit or credit card, your money goes to this intermediary merchant account. With a dedicated merchant account, you enter into a legal agreement with the issuing bank or company and must usually undergo a lengthy credit check and application process. The most basic consumer protection policy states that a cardholder is entitled to get their money back if the good or service they purchased is not delivered. The payment processors risk losing money every time they handle a credit card transaction on your behalf, because they must cover the cost of chargebacks and credit issues. So getting a dedicated merchant account takes some effort, including gathering your financial statements, submitting an application (sometimes with an application fee), and convincing the underwriters that you are not a risky investment for them.
Should you get a dedicated merchant account? That depends. If you’re only processing a few dozen credit cards per month, then the lengthy application process and the myriad of fees, contracts, and terms of service may not be worth it. South Africa’s top four banks (Standard Bank, Nedbank, ABSA and FNB) all offer Internet Merchant Accounts. A merchant can therefore apply for an Internet Merchant Account directly with their bank.
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5. How much does the service cost?
​Payment gateways are going to cost you money; this is a fact that no one can deny. There are two types of charges that can factor in when choosing your preferred gateway – sign up/service fees, and transaction fees. Some payment gateways require an upfront fee and/or a monthly flat fee to use, plus a transaction fee, usually a small percentage on each transaction. Others are free to sign-up, but charge a transaction fee. Payment processing fees are a cost of doing business, so it’s important to think about cost comparisons carefully – small savings can make a big difference when multiplied over sizeable transaction volumes.

So which one should I choose?

Here’s our list of recommended payment gateways to choose from.
Some of the payment gateways will require setting up a merchant account with your bank, and others do not. 

Let’s look at them in more detail:
Paygate
Requires a merchant account: Yes
Website: www.paygate.co.za

Paygate has been in business since 1996, and provides various payment gateway options for Mastercard, Visa, American Express, and Diners Club. PayGate has a number of options including Payweb which easily adds payment functionality to your website via a transferal to their payment page, PayXML which allows more integration options so you can host the payment page on your own website, and Paybill which allows customers to offer the functionality to pay any bill online.

PayPal
Requires a merchant account: No
Website: www.paypal.com/za

​PayPal is one of the leading global payment services, and offered merchant services to South Africa from 2010 onwards. PayPal has partnered with FNB to easily allow withdrawing or payments using their bank accounts, and also for non-FNB customers via the FNB Withdraw service.
The options available for online payments via PayPal include the PayPal express checkout for PayPal customers, and the PayPal standard checkout which authorizes payments and return the user their your website.

Payfast
Requires a merchant account: No
Website: www.payfast.co.za

PayFast have simplified the pricing by offering no setup fees or monthly fees, PayFast also offer a InstantEFT option using a code which they then “scrape” on their bank account, and almost immediately process the transaction. .
PayFast also offers bitcoin, payD, Ukask, and mobicred payments, and they power some of the leading online merchants in South Africa including Takealot, Sportsmans Warehouse, and Legendary Brands.
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PayU
Requires a merchant account: Not for PayU Easy. (PayU Plus, and PayU Enterprise require one)
Website: www.payu.co.za

PayU is one of the largest payment providers worldwide, and offers a variety of options for business and the largest number of payment methods of any gateway in South Africa. PayU is also available in 16 countries, and has a robust enterprise ready system for transaction queues for businesses requiring a large number of transactions at a time. The PayU Wallet allows consumers to pay from their wallet and not need to type in credit card details on checkout.

SnapScan
Requires a merchant account: No
website: www.snapscan.com

​​SnapScan currently empowers over 17,000 merchants via their handy payment app, and have now launched a method of paying via the app for online purchases. Merchants sign up for an account, and customers then use the app and scan a QR-code unique to the order to facilitate payment. With no need to enter credit card details the process is simplified and more secure.

Virtual Card Services
Requires a merchant account: Yes
Website: website.vcs.co.za

Established in 1996, Virtual Card Services (VCS) was one of the first payment gateways in South Africa. 
VCS offers a number of related products such as virtual terminal for processing transactions in bulk, retrying declined transactions, and giving refunds to name a few. Their Virtual EFT service, allows merchants to create single or recurring credits/debits and presenting these to the Automated Clearing Bereau (ACB) for processing.

MyGate
​Requires a merchant account: Yes
Website: www.mygate.co.za
MyGate enables customers to have one point of contact for all of their Payment and Collection needs. MyGate is a registered Payment Service Provider (PSP), offering payment gateway services that enable merchants to accept credit card and pin-less debit cards from a website. 

MyGate offer 3 main pricing tiers which have varying monthly costs, and transaction fees which can be chosen based on the number of transactions through your store .
MyGate also includes recurring payment options, and mail order or call centre payments, which turns your PC into a point of sale system. (POS)
MyGate currently works with all four major Banks in South Africa and assists all its clients in setting up their merchant accounts with the banks.

Pantone Color of the year 2020

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A timeless and enduring blue hue, PANTONE 19-4052 Classic Blue is elegant in its simplicity. Suggestive of the sky at dusk, the reassuring qualities of the thought-provoking PANTONE 19-4052 Classic Blue highlight our desire for a dependable and stable foundation on which to build as we cross the threshold into a new era.
Imprinted in our psyches as a restful color, PANTONE 19-4052 Classic Blue brings a sense of peace and tranquility to the human spirit, offering refuge. Aiding concentration and bringing laser like clarity, PANTONE 19-4052 Classic Blue re-centers our thoughts. A reflective blue tone, Classic Blue fosters resilience.
As technology continues to race ahead of the human ability to process it all, it is easy to understand why we gravitate to colors that are honest and offer the promise of protection. Non-aggressive and easily relatable, the trusted PANTONE 19-4052 Classic Blue lends itself to relaxed interaction. Associated with the return of another day, this universal favorite is comfortably embraced.

Pantone color of the year 2019

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Vibrant, yet mellow PANTONE 16-1546 Living Coral embraces us with warmth and nourishment to provide comfort and buoyancy in our continually shifting environment.
Representing the fusion of modern life, PANTONE Living Coral is a nurturing color that appears in our natural surroundings and at the same time, displays a lively presence within social media.
PANTONE 16-1546 Living Coral emits the desired, familiar, and energizing aspects of color found in nature. In its glorious, yet unfortunately more elusive, display beneath the sea, this vivifying and effervescent color mesmerizes the eye and mind. Lying at the center of our naturally vivid and chromatic ecosystem, PANTONE Living Coral is evocative of how coral reefs provide shelter to a diverse kaleidoscope of color.

Pantone color of the year 2017

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Keep this color palette in mind If you need to update your website and marketing materials in 2017. This year’s color trends are both earthy and bold, inspired by nature and vitality.
“One of the things that we saw this year, was a renewed sense of imagination in which color was appearing in context that was different than the traditional,” said Leatrice Eiseman, Executive Director of the Pantone Color Institute. “Reminiscent of the hues that surround us in nature, our Spring 2017 Fashion Color Report evokes a spectrum of emotion and feeling. From the warmth of sunny days with PANTONE 13-0755 Primrose Yellow to the invigorating feeling of breathing fresh mountain air with PANTONE 18-0107 Kale and the desire to escape to pristine waters with PANTONE 14-4620 Island Paradise, designers applied color in playful, yet thoughtful and precise combinations to fully capture the promises, hope and transformation that we yearn for each Spring.”

The big bad website scam

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custom or template web design 

Imagine you have ordered a one of a kind, custom designed wedding ring, for your soon to be wife. You’ve paid some serious money and have been anxiously waiting for months for your state of the art, custom piece of jewelry to be ready. Your fiancee was over the moon and proudly wore her custom ring, that perfectly embodied your special, one of a kind love…. Until one day she walked into a department store and spotted the very same ring sold by the dozen for 50 bucks..

How would you feel? Would you be angry? Sue the jewelry “designer”? Not marry your gullible fiancee? All of the above?
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Well, what if I told you that the gullible fiancee in this story is actually you. That special, unique ring is your companies website and the cheating jewelry designer is your web developer?
​ Keep reading…

In the past few years, I come across way too many businesses in South Africa, who are spending a small fortune on their “custom designed website” only to find out that the design agency or web developer they contracted has simply used a template sold on www.Themeforest.net and available to anyone who wishes to purchase it for 58 Dollars!

It may sound fantastic, almost unbelievable, but you see it correctly. We’re not talking about an inexperienced Freelancer or Junior Web Developer, who has pulled the wool over these clients eyes so blatantly to make an extra buck or two. I’m referring to well known and large digital agencies misleading corporate clients with sizable marketing budgets to spend.

Certainly, there is absolutely nothing wrong with using an attractive, well designed and coded template for a client with a small budget, as long as the client has been honestly informed and thus know from the outset that a template will be used and that the same template is available to anyone who happens to want to buy it. The business ethics are the key factor here..

What is not ethical, but is happening all too often, is selling clients custom websites and charging custom prices on the basis of the time spent in development, but delivering a cheap, template driven website that has been sold and downloaded thousands of times from websites like www.Themeforest.net  and others.

How do you, the unsuspecting client with no coding or any technical knowledge, check if your website is a custom job or template? 

How not to be a victim?

You can either view the page source code ( just right-click on the page and select View page source)
Or
you could use a third party online service such as http://whatwpthemeisthat.com/
or http://www.wpthemedetector.com/
Just simply enter your site URL and it will tell you the name of the theme your website is using.

So what is the difference?

With a custom designed website, each element of the website is built around your own content and the marketing strategy that your business requires. As it’s name implies, it is fully customizable and can accommodate future expansion to enable it to grow as your company expands. A custom site has far better SEO potential as it is designed from the outset to maximize your companies exposure on the web. They are designed to be responsive, retaining all functionality and appearance regardless of the device or browser being used. The uniqueness available to you in custom design sets your business apart from the competition and the flexibility of custom coding is unmatched by the strict conformity found in templates.

Disadvantages of template driven websites

Your company has no unique online presence, as anyone can purchase the template driving your website and even copy features of your design if they wish. Templates typically load and display slower and many are still not responsive to mobile devices. Templates have very limited functionality, their graphics and navigation is often poor due to the overloaded script required to appeal to the widest audience possible. Templates are notorious security risks. The need to design and sell the template as fast as possible to catch the latest trends, often leads to incomplete testing leaving bugs and security holes that make easy prey for hackers.

By their very nature, templates become outdated and suffer from a lack of continuous support. Once the template is deemed to be old or not in fashion, it is often forgotten by the developers and without ongoing support and refreshing, the template will eventually suffer from higher bounce rates, poor user experience as detailed above.

Conclusion

In conclusion, allow me to say that templates are a great option for clients with smaller, more constrained budgets. They give businesses a presence on the web that they might not have been able to otherwise afford. However, for clients with the budget and the need for a more sophisticated solution, custom designs are the only way to satisfy this particular demand and clients that have contracted agencies or designers to create this for them, need to take responsibility for ensuring that they are in fact getting what they are paying so dearly for. Any development contract should state clearly what is being provided: a template off the shelf or a custom designed solution, developed from scratch, with benchmarks stipulated for each phase of the project.
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For developers, who have been contracted to create custom solutions for their clients, you are obliged to adhere to your contracts and not cheat your hard won clients out of the magic they have paid you for.
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If you are feeling like the jilted fiancee who was promised gold and diamonds but received tin and glass , contact us for an honest, upfront solution.

Edina Gardos
​Director