Now more than ever, goods and services are being bought over the internet. From a business perspective, ecommerce was a very difficult proposition, involving complex, and very expensive, payment gateways in order to have secure transactions on a website. The expense of setting up payments simply wasn’t worth it to non-profits or small, newly-formed businesses.
PayPal was the first to provide an inexpensive alternative payment gateway, and since then, several other companies have created their own systems. We recently discovered a great new way to receive payments through our form program and Stripe. For one of our clients, we created a page with a simple form which connects to Stripe’s payment gateway. It’s a very easy way to provide your customers or donors with a means to send money to you.
Clear Advantages of Payment Forms
The benefits of a payment form on your website include:
- The forms are not limited to Stripe’s gateway, but can also run through Paypal or any number of other processors.
- They accept an open ended amount entered by the user, which is beneficial to make donations to non-profits, or they can have predefined product/service pricing.
- The forms can be used privately by password protecting a page, or just by not linking it from anywhere on the website.
- They can accept recurring payments or subscriptions.
- All credit card data is stored outside of the website by a third party, so it’s secure.
So far, we’ve set up a few pages with these payment forms, including our own site. These pages are very easy to create, and they provide a great service to your business. Additionally, they’re much simpler and less expensive than other gateways. These forms make online payment a more reasonable option for small businesses and non-profits. If you have any questions about this service, be sure to reach out.
