How do you choose the right solution?

Are you looking for the best cryptocurrency payment gateway to accept Bitcoin on your website? This article provides a checklist of all the factors to consider when choosing a crypto payment solution and is divided into the following sections:

• Checkout page
• Payment functions
• Merchant account
• Taxes & Financial Reporting
• Technical integration
• Costs & fees
• Accompaniment

Offering a crypto payment method in the shopping cart checkout process will be one of the most important tasks in 2022 for those who have not yet implemented one. As the trend towards the introduction of mainstream cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum or Stellar continues to grow and new currencies and stablecoins keep appearing, owners and owners of digital currencies are looking for real use cases and ways to spend them. Of course, this includes buying the next pair of shoes or paying the annual membership fee of your favorite IDE with bitcoins.

But how do you go about it and decide on the right crypto payment processor for your business? There are a number of crypto payment solution providers in the market and identifying the best one for your business needs is to:

• Not easy, especially if the company does not have the experience and know-how for payments in general and cryptocurrencies in particular
• This is crucial, because you do not want to change the solution you have chosen, which is integrated into your financial processes, again later.

So here’s a little help in the form of a checklist with functions that your preferred payment solution should contain. Create a shortlist with leading cryptocurrency payment processors such as BitPay, COINQVEST or CoinBase Commerce and compare the functionality individually.

CHECKLIST to choose the right crypto payment solution for your business:

Checkout page:

This is where the customer pays, so it is the most important and critical element to consider. Ease of use and security are key here to reduce shopping cart abandonment.

• Ease of use – Is it easy to use, well designed, clear and mobile-friendly?
• Trust – Is it safe and do you get feedback like API responses on the status of the payment?
• Speed ​​- How fast are transactions processed (also across blockchains)?
• Is it hosted or self-hosted?
• Is a white label version available?
• Is a demo version available?

Payment functions:

At the heart of a payment gateway is a robust and scalable payment machine that has proven itself in processing thousands, or better, millions of transactions.

• Checkout / shop currencies
  • [Info] The currency of the products listed in your online store
  • Does the service provider support your shop currency? If your checkout currency is USD or EUR, you are mostly on the safe side. But what about other fiat currencies like CHF, SGD or ARS

• Billing / payment currencies
  • [Info] The cryptocurrencies with which the customer can pay
  • How many cryptocurrencies do you have to offer? Of course the most important ones like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Stellar Lumens etc. But do you really need a list of 50 or more cryptocurrencies from which the customer can choose? User experience and cart abandonment rates are critical here, and research shows that payments are made almost exclusively in some of the most popular cryptocurrencies.

• Settlement currencies
  • [Info] The currency that the merchant wants to receive. It is usually the same as the shop currency, but it can also be different. For example, products are sold in ARS, but the retailer wants to receive USD.
  • Why is that important? Because as a trader, you most likely don’t want to hold Bitcoin or Ethereum and be exposed to high volatility rates. If your accounting is in USD, you want to receive USD even if your customer pays in Bitcoin.
  • Which billing currencies are available?
  • Are payments automatically converted into the billing currency of your choice (crypto or fiat)?

• Cash withdrawal
  • [Info] The process of sending money from your merchant account to your bank account.
  • Integration with national payment channels such as SEPA for Europe or ACH for the USA available?
  • Does the solution offer direct payouts to bank accounts for fiat currencies? Or do you need to route your money through a crypto exchange?
  • How long does it take for the money to land in your bank account?
  • Are incoming payments immediately available for withdrawal or does the provider hold them back for a certain period of time?

• Swaps
  • Can you switch between crypto and fiat currencies directly in your merchant account?

• insoles
  • Can you add funds to your account to distribute and make payments, e.g. to pay invoices, suppliers or employees?

• Refunds
  • Can payments be refunded and at what cost?

• Handling of payment exceptions
  • [Info] In contrast to credit card payments, which are accessed by the merchant, crypto payments are pushed by the payer. This can lead to errors. The sender can make mistakes such as sending too little, too much, late, or sending a payment twice. These deviations must be recognized automatically.
  • Does the service provider handle underpayments, overpayments, late and repeated payments and notify you and the sender of this in order to take action (e.g. make a second payment if the first payment is insufficient)?
  • Can you automatically accept payments that differ slightly from the payment amount? For example, if the payment you receive is 2% less than the original payment amount, do you want to accept it anyway? Some payment providers offer the option to set a threshold, which makes payment processing much easier.

Merchant account:

The merchant account is the user interface for your interaction with the payment service provider. Here you manage incoming payments, payment exceptions, refunds, swaps, withdrawals, customer data, etc.

• Manage multiple fiat and cryptocurrencies in one account
  • Can you manage multiple currencies in a single merchant account or do you need one merchant account per currency?

• Request payments in multiple currencies
  • Can you switch between currencies to solicit payments from customers?

• Withdraw to bank account
  • Can you withdraw your accrued funds in different currencies to bank accounts and crypto wallets?

Finance & Reporting:

In order to accept crypto payments transparently and in a tax-compliant manner and to keep the bookkeeping clean, payment data must be integrated into your company’s financial processes.

• transparency
  • Is the payment linked to customer and order data?
  • Are the sender and recipient of the financial transaction available?

• Financial report
  • Can accountants access reports like sales per month / year / customer / currency etc?
  • Are real-time balances and monthly / annual balances provided?

• Data exports
  • Are data exports available for use in other finance and accounting systems?

• Invoicing
  • Does the solution provide an invoice for every payment?

Technical integration:

There are several ways to integrate a cryptocurrency payment gateway into your website and it depends on the technical setup of your application, e.g. B. whether you use a content management system (CMS), a shopping cart solution or prefer direct integration via REST-API.

• REST API
  • Is it a state-of-the-art, scalable, and enterprise-grade API?
  • Is detailed API documentation available?
  • Are there API logs available for easy debugging?

• SDKs
  • Do you offer an SDK for your programming language?

• Plugins
  • Is a plugin available for your CMS or shopping cart system?

• Hosting the checkout pages
  • [Info] Hosted checkout pages are designed and resident on the payment company’s server.
  • Does the provider offer hosted checkout pages?
  • Is it possible to host / white-label the checkout pages yourself?

• Testing
  • Is a test environment or sandbox offered?

• Blockchain
  • [Info] Does the service provider build on a specific blockchain and does it use assets that are issued on this blockchain? An example of this would be the Stellar blockchain, where BTC, ETH, USDC, etc. are available as tokens in the Stellar network. Or does the crypto payment processor integrate in a proprietary way in every blockchain such as Bitcoin or Ethereum? Why does it matter? Think about it, when new cryptocurrencies become popular, how easily and quickly can the payment gateway offer them as a payment option? Or if you want to expand your business to new markets, is the fiat currency and integration with the bank rails of the target market already available?
  • Single blockchain integration?
  • Proprietary integration with any blockchain?

Costs & fees:

• Setup costs
  • Is there a one-time setup fee?

• Maintenance costs
  • Do you have to pay monthly or yearly fees?

• Transaction fees
  • What is the fee per transaction?

Accompaniment:

• Customer service
  • How quickly and competently does the service provider react to your inquiries?

• observance
  • Does the payment service provider follow the necessary KYC and AML requirements for customer accounts?
  • Does the crypto payment gateway have the required operating licenses?
  • Which financial regulator oversees the payment provider?

• Transaction volume
  • How many cryptocurrency payments does the payment service process per year?

Conclusion:

This checklist gives you a pretty comprehensive set of features to look at when comparing crypto payment service providers. Your next step would be to shortlist leading payment companies like BitPay, COINQVEST or CoinBase Commerce and compare the functions one by one.