What is a Payment Gateway?
A payment gateway is the software that reads and processes a customer’s card payment in a retail setting. In traditional, brick-and-mortar retail, this is the software in the point-of-sales (POS) system. For ecommerce retailers, this is the software (usually cloud-based) that connects the customer with your store during checkout and processes their card information.
How Can Payment Gateway Data Help Your Store?
When you segment your store’s data by payment gateway, you can see which gateways your customers prefer using. This may sound like an innocuous detail for your ecommerce site, but the less friction your customer has in the checkout process, the better. For example, PayPal is one of the longest standing payment gateways that has been used, almost ubiquitously across ecommerce, over the last decade and a half. If your customers are accustomed to checking out via PayPal, and trust that process, neglecting to include a PayPal option can be a massive detriment to your business. Testing which payment gateways provide the best experience for your customers (and measuring this in your data) can help you improve your conversion rate, customer retention, and more.