Hi, Darko,
You have asked an important question!
For you to convince these types of people, you need to get involved in educating them tremendously.
For instance, you will need to explain the "pro's" and "cons" of doing business online; and weight the obvious advantages of an online business over the offline ones.
You see, there are several terms that are used almost interchangeably when describing online payments. Just take as an example, if you explain the following terminologies to them, you will bring them home the more, e.g.:--
1. Payment Gateway;
2. Payment Processor;
3. Payment Provider;
4. Payment Service or Payment System; and last, but not the least
5. Merchant Account.
Though each of the above terminologies is distinct, though with subtle differences, they all refer to a company, service, or application that acts as a financial middleman between your website and your customer, and between both of you and your bank accounts. Each facilitates the completion of online transactions, and the processing of online payments. Now, let's take them one-by-one:--
1. Payment Gateway: This is a service that receives the online payment request from your website and directs it to the payment processor.
2. Payment processor: This is a service that validates the purchaser’s credit card details (e.g., those of your member, donor, or supporter) and checks if they have sufficient funds in their account to cover the payment. If the customer has sufficient funds, the transaction is authorized, and the funds are transferred from the customer’s account. The status of the transaction is transmitted back to the payment gateway which then sends a status message to your website.
3. Payment provider: A payment provider (or payment service provider) is the company that operates the payment gateway or payment processor services. In some cases, the payment gateway and payment processor are combined into a single service known by either name.
4. Payment service or payment system: Where a payment provider offers multiple types of payment gateways – with different features and pricing – each type is referred to as a payment service or payment system. For example, PayPal is a well-known payment service provider that offers a number of payment services or payment systems. And there are still many others out there; but it would not be proper to go through all the list in this Answer so as to avoid unnecessary advert for any of them .
5. Merchant account: This is another important term to understand. When an online transaction is successfully completed, the funds are transferred from the purchaser’s account to your merchant account, a special kind of bank account used exclusively to hold funds received from credit and debit card transactions. To accept online payments, you usually need to set up a merchant account with your payment provider. Funds accumulating in your merchant account are transferred to your organization’s bank account on a regular basis.
In summary, my brother, if you can get involved in educating your prospects on all of these, perhaps, your explanations can put their minds at rest to start doing business online, regardless of the fact that in the countries where most of them reside, there is some seeming uncomfortable stance with such mode of business transactions.
Hope this helps a bit.
Wishing you best of luck
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Hi, Darko,
You have asked an important question!
For you to convince these types of people, you need to get involved in educating them tremendously.
For instance, you will need to explain the "pro's" and "cons" of doing business online; and weight the obvious advantages of an online business over the offline ones.
You see, there are several terms that are used almost interchangeably when describing online payments. Just take as an example, if you explain
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