50 Shades of White-label Payment Gateway
As the merchant services industry has progressed, a number of companies and people are thinking about being payment gateway providers.
In the beginning, the majority of companies use third-party gateway services to take electronic payments. Their needs get more sophisticated as their processing volumes increase. As a result, they start considering using their own brands to offer gateway services.
In terms of payment gateway services, there are actually a number of options available. The options vary from your own payment gateway solution to a third-party gateway service. A wide selection of white-label solutions lay between these two ends of the spectrum.
We will now analyze the 4 shades of white-label payment gateway services.
- A white-label payment gateway services. This gateway solution is yours in name only. A third party actually provides the service, but from your customer’s perspective, the service provider is you. This cost-effective option is great for enhancing your brand and reputation. The third party deals with big problems like integrations, PCI compliance, etc.
- A dedicated payment gateway option. You have the option to improve the product with new features. Again, you don’t have to worry about integration or PCI compliance with this option as the third party will deal with these concerns. This option is more expensive compared to the regular white-label gateway option since the maintenance of the service is an extra cost.
- Virtual payment gateway solutions. This option does not require physical installation of software on dedicated servers. PCI certification is not needed. The virtual gateway is found in a cluster of dedicated nodes. Because of this, other cluster nodes absorb the load during busy times. As a result, this option is not as costly as the dedicated option. The drawback is that you don’t have as much control over the process.
- Licensed payment gateway option. The license gateway option includes open source code, which is customizable to your needs. PCI compliance, integration and certifications of this gateway product are your responsibility. The good news is that most licensed gateway products include integrations of certain acquirers or processors of interest to you.
Which of the above white-label payment gateway options should you go with? This will depend on your specific circumstances, processing volumes and needs.
You can also review this video we just released, which explains the process:
