Hosted payment forms are pages "hosted" on external, third-party sites to process electronic transactions (i.e. payments made with credit or debit cards). In order to successfully complete each transaction, online shoppers temporarily leave your site, key in their credit card information, and then return to your e-commerce store.
But why make customers go through this extra step? Don't hosted payment forms break the continuity of the shopping experience?
In a way, yes. After all, you're redirecting traffic away from your online property before bringing the customer back.
However, hosted payment forms offer important advantages over more traditional on-site payment options:
1. Greater Payment Security
As a business owner, you sell products and/or services. This is what you do best. By contrast, third-party payment services specialize in data security. This is what they do best. At BluePay, for example, we work around the clock adding new fraud prevention measures to stop hackers from stealing private financial data.
With hosted payment forms, you're able to outsource data protection, allowing you to continue focusing on your core offerings. The end result is that each transaction becomes more secure, helping to reduce fraudulent losses and technical headaches.
2. Reduced Merchant Liability
With hosted payment forms, hacking is exceedingly rare — especially among reputable hosted payment providers. But in the unlikely event that something does happen, you (the merchant) aren’t responsible. Although there are still PCI compliance rules that all credit card-accepting businesses must follow, your online store doesn't have to cover losses resulting from fraudulent activity.
With hosted payment forms, you're able to dramatically reduce risk exposure.
3. Setting up Shop
When you host your own payment pages, it takes a while to get completely set up. There exists a whole series of hurdles and approvals before you can begin safely accepting credit cards online. Storing users’ financial data for one-time purchases is difficult enough. If you also want to enable recurring payments, you need additional protocols to keep prying eyes away during each subsequent transaction.
In addition, you also need in-house expertise to design high-converting payment pages.
If you already have a great legal team, IT experts, and graphic designers, these extra steps are relatively easy. But if you operate a streamlined e-commerce store with minimal staff, hosted payment forms allow you to get up and running very quickly:
- As mentioned before, liability becomes a non-issue. You don't store any user data on your own servers.
- We offer default payment templates that have been optimized for high conversion rates.
- We also offer customizable templates that allow you to create and brand your own hosted payment forms.
Ready to Take Advantage of These Hosted Payment Benefits?
More secure, easy to install and limited liability. With hosted payment forms, you can begin safely accepting credit card payments online in a matter of days (instead of weeks or months with self-hosted payment options).
If you're ready to get started, use the free links below:
- To learn more about hosted payment forms through BluePay, click here.
- To learn more about hosted payment form security, click here.