Multiple Payment Gateways: Should You Consolidate To One?

Are you using multiple payment gateways or payment integrations for your online business? If so, you might already suspect that you’re doing things the hard way.

Does this scenario sound familiar?

You signed up with your first payment gateway because it allowed you to be up and running in a day. After a while you wanted to add new payment methods, like Apple Pay, which weren’t supported by the gateway. So you looked for a second gateway to add.

You later noticed you were getting more global shoppers, but a high number of declines. Neither gateway could give you the necessary support for cross-border commerce, so you had to find a third, and maybe even a fourth, gateway. And eventually, you wanted to start offering subscriptions… so a fifth gateway was added.

Your own story may have stopped at two, or go on to six or seven (probably for different reasons), but the end result is the same:

You’re now struggling to manage multiple accounts, integrations, vendors, contracts, relationships, and reports.

We hear variations of this story every day; it’s a common situation! But there is a way out. Instead of dealing with multiple payment gateway integrations, many merchants opt to switch to a single, more powerful gateway connection that gives them everything they need.

So how do you know when it’s time to ditch and switch? If any of the statements below are true for you, consider it a red flag—and start looking for better options.

5 Signs You Should Consolidate To One Payment Gateway

1. You’re spending too much time reconciling multiple accounts.

Figuring out which payments came from which gateways requires a lot of manual effort and time. If you’re using multiple gateways, you may also wind up with multiple merchant accounts on one website, which means still more reconciliation.

2. You’re often searching for new gateways/integrations to fill in gaps.

A gateway that supports only a limited number of payment options limits your business. If you’re constantly in search of additional coverage—like payment gateways that support multiple currencies or payment integrations that support subscriptions—you’re better off finding a full-featured one that can serve all your needs.

Don’t commit to a new payment gateway until you’ve asked these 10 questions!

3. You’re adding new gateways without migrating customer credit cards.

Every time you add a new gateway you should add your existing customer cards to it to ensure smooth checkout (otherwise, returning customers will have to reenter their credit card information). Or, in an effort to avoid migration, you might have decided to send only new traffic to your new payment gateway, a “solution” that only adds to the confusion.

4. You’re devoting too many developer resources to directing gateway traffic, implementing a failover system, and administering updates.

Multiple payment gateways require concentrated development work on the back end to do things like direct customers to the right payment gateway, and create a redirect system for failed transactions so they can be tried at a second acquiring bank. Said developer is probably also tied up with things like adding new payment methods to each gateway and performing multiple updates.

5. You’re struggling with multiple, complex data analysis reports.

Reports are valuable, but they become less so when you have too many to handle! Add to that the different reporting formats for every gateway and you’ll eventually need to develop your own reporting system to manage it all!

Why mess with all these things when you can have a single connection to one payment gateway that gives you everything you need?

When you ditch your multiple payment gateways for one that does everything, like BlueSnap’s All-in-One Payment Platform, you get:

• One account to reconcile. Period.
• Support for the latest and most popular payment types (like ewallets), new business models (like marketplaces or subscriptions), and global shoppers.
• Simple, secure data migration. (Yep, we’ll take care of it for you.)
• Automatic failover and intelligent payment routing. Both work behind the scenes to give every transaction the best chance of success, without any effort on your part. And adding new payment methods—or any other options—is a snap.
• One set of reports to analyze (and the time you’ll gain from doing less data analysis!).

Interested in knowing more about how the All-in-One Payment Platform could take the place of your multiple payment gateways?

Check out the BlueSnap website. You’ll find information about all the ways you can accept payments, what our global payment processing engine can do for you, and our advanced eCommerce tools and integrations. And if you have any questions, feel free to get in touch!