Payments

What this category covers

Taking money and moving it: card processing, alternative payment methods, checkout components, payouts to other people and the reporting that follows.

Products here differ in what they take responsibility for. Some process a card and stop. Some act as the seller of record and handle tax. Some specialise in marketplaces where money has to reach several parties.

Raising invoices belongs in invoicing and billing. Storefronts and carts are in e-commerce.

The first question is who is legally selling

A payment processor moves money for you and leaves the obligations where they were: your company sells, and you handle tax registration and invoicing in every market that requires it.

A merchant of record sells to the customer on your behalf. It costs more per transaction and takes on tax calculation, filing and much of the compliance burden, which is why software businesses selling internationally often accept the higher rate.

That single decision changes what the fee comparison means. A cheaper processor plus tax obligations across a dozen countries is not obviously cheaper than a higher rate with those obligations removed.

Methods, and why geography decides them

Cards dominate in some markets and are a minority in others.

Bank transfer schemes, local wallets, instalment options and country-specific methods carry the majority of transactions in several places where an all-card checkout simply fails. Look at where your customers are and which methods they already use, then check coverage against that list rather than against a global count.

Currency handling deserves the same attention. Showing prices in a local currency raises conversion, and conversion charges vary widely between providers. Ask which currencies you can settle in and what the spread is, since that cost is easy to overlook next to the headline percentage.

Fees, and the ones that are not on the page

• Transaction fees, a percentage plus a fixed amount, higher for international cards.
• Currency conversion, charged as a spread rather than a stated fee.
• Chargebacks, with a fee that applies whether or not you win the dispute.
• Payouts, particularly to accounts in other countries.
• Refunds, where the original fee is not always returned.

Model the total on your average transaction size. A fixed component per payment matters enormously for small amounts and barely at all for large ones, which is why two providers can swap places depending on what you sell.

Fraud, disputes and account risk

Every provider runs fraud screening, and the setting that matters is how much legitimate business it blocks.

Ask what controls you have over rules, what a review queue looks like, and how declines are reported. An overly aggressive filter is invisible in the dashboard and expensive in lost sales.

Disputes need a process. Evidence submission, timelines and win rates vary, and subscription businesses accumulate them steadily. Understand where the responsibility sits before the first one arrives.

Account stability is the risk people underestimate. Restricted categories, sudden volume changes and a description that does not match what you actually sell can all lead to a freeze. Describe the business accurately at onboarding, keep documentation ready, and have a second provider configured before you need one.

Integration and the practical checks

Hosted checkout pages are quick and reduce your compliance scope. Embedded components give control over the experience and put more responsibility on your side.

Whichever you choose, test the whole path during evaluation: a successful payment, a decline, a partial refund, a subscription change and the report your accountant will ask for. The way a provider handles the second and third of those tells you more than the pricing page, which is a pattern examined further in what pricing pages hide.

Running two providers, and why it is worth it

Payment providers suspend accounts, and the businesses that survive it are the ones who prepared before it happened.

A second configured provider, even with little volume through it, turns an account freeze from an emergency into an inconvenience. The work is mostly done in advance: onboarding completed, integration tested, and a documented route for switching.

There are commercial reasons too. Rates differ by region and by card type, alternative methods have different coverage, and being able to route traffic gives you something to discuss at renewal.

The cost is complexity in reconciliation, since two providers mean two settlement reports. That is a real overhead and a smaller one than an unexpected fortnight without the ability to take money.