4 Ways To Accept Payments Online (2024)

Doing business online is pretty much a given for any company, even if your primary product or service is purchased in person. Accepting online payment for your goods or services helps you reach a wider audience and keep the customer experience running smoothly. We break down four fast, easy, and effective ways for your business to accept online payments.

4 Ways to Accept Online Payments

There are a variety of ways to accept online payments, and the methods that are right for you depend on the kind of business you run.

1. Online payment service provider

If you run a service-based business or sell products online, an online payment service provider might be the most common way you get paid by customers or clients.

PayPal and Stripe are the most popular payment service providers, though you might also use the processor built into Shopify or WooCommerce if you run an e-commerce business through one of those platforms.

Most modern website builders, such as Squarespace, Kajabi and WordPress, integrate easily with payment service providers. You just need to create an account with PayPal or Stripe, then enter that information in your website builder to enable payments on your website.

Online payment service providers let you accept credit card payments or payments directly from your customer’s account with the provider, such as PayPal, to yours.

It’s free to set up an account with most payment service providers, and you’ll pay a fee per transaction of around 3%, depending on the platform. Many popular point-of-sale (POS) systems also offer e-commerce modules with online payment processing.

2. ACH transfer

Automated clearing house (ACH) is a network that moves money electronically between bank accounts in the United States. This is how you receive money if you’re ever paid by direct deposit.

To accept payments via ACH transfer, you generally don’t need any special capabilities. You just have to give the customer or client your direct deposit information, which includes:

• Your bank’s routing number
• Your bank account number

Some companies require a voided check, which includes those numbers, or an authorization form from your bank. But many will initiate ACH with just your bank information.

Receiving payment via ACH is usually up to the payer because they need to have access to the necessary accounts and tools, including an ACH payment service provider like Gusto, Bill.com or Stax. The payer also covers the fees for an ACH transfer, compared with a credit card transaction, where you cover the fees as the recipient.

You could, however, receive ACH payments via Stripe with your own account. You’ll pay a 0.08% fee per transaction ($5 cap), and the customer has to connect their bank account using the Plaid network.

Related: Best ACH Payment Processing Services

3. Mobile payments

Mobile wallets like Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay make online payments super convenient for your customers. Their credit card information is entered automatically, so they don’t have to fumble with typing in all those numbers from a physical card.

To implement mobile payments on a website you’re building from scratch, you need to follow developer guidelines to build each into your site:

• Apple Pay
• Google Pay
• Samsung Pay

Most popular e-commerce platforms support mobile payments and make it easy to accept this payment method by simply activating the option—no coding required.

4. Invoicing and billing

You can make it easy for clients to pay for your services by using an invoicing platform that enables one-click payments right from their email.

Invoicing platforms including QuickBooks, Zoho, Xero, Wave and Harvest offer integrations with major payment service providers, including PayPal and Stripe. You can bill clients via email, and the platforms build messages that include a payment button to encourage them to pay right away.

You can choose which payment methods to accept—just activate your preferred method, or activate several and give the client options.

Benefits of Accepting Online Payments

Even if you run a business that promotes and sells services online, you could get by without accepting payments online. You could go old school: Send a bill and wait for a check in the mail.

You could. But you’ll probably want to accept online payments for all the opportunities and convenience they add to your business.

Regardless of what you sell, your business can benefit from online payments, because they:

• Expand your audience: Accepting multiple forms of payment makes doing business with you convenient for more people. The more seamless your payment process, the more positive the customer experience—and, therefore, the more likely customers will do business with you again.
• Make memberships and subscriptions easy to set up: Payment service providers like Stripe and PayPal facilitate automatic recurring payments. That saves you the hassle of invoicing customers and collecting payments each billing period. Plus, it improves retention, because customers don’t have to see the bill and decide whether to renew their subscription each month.
• Get you paid faster: Waiting for a customer to receive an invoice and send you a check in the mail could take days or weeks. Online payments can happen instantly or, at most, within two or three days.

Challenges With Accepting Online Payments

The convenience and benefits of online payments come with some trade-offs—though the pros tend to outweigh the cons. As you set up online payments for your business, keep these potential pitfalls in mind:

• Fees: Unlike a check in the mail, online payments require an intermediary—and that intermediary needs to be paid. You’ll sacrifice a chunk of your revenue to payment processing fees.
• Data management: The potential for identity theft and credit card fraud are way higher when customers make purchases online versus in person (or with a payment method other than their credit card). If you use a self-hosted payment gateway, you’ll be responsible for protecting customers’ financial information on your servers. You can offload that responsibility by using a hosted payment gateway or a payment service provider.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)