What are the different types of e-commerce payment systems?

When you purchase goods and services online, you pay for them using an electronic medium. This mode of payment, without using cash or cheque, is called an e-commerce payment system and is also known as online or electronic payment systems.

The growing use of internet-based banking and shopping has seen the growth of various e-commerce payment systems and technology has been developed to increase, improve and provide secure e-payment transactions.

Paperless e-commerce payments have revolutionised the payment processing by reducing paper work, transaction costs, and personnel cost. The systems are user-friendly and consume less time than manual processing and help businesses extend their market reach.

The different types of e-commerce payments in use today are

Credit Card

The most popular form of payment for e-commerce transactions is through credit cards. It is simple to use; the customer has to just enter their credit card number and date of expiry in the appropriate area on the seller’s web page. To improve the security system, increased security measures, such as the use of a card verification number (CVN), have been introduced to on-line credit card payments. The CVN system helps detect fraud by comparing the CVN number with the cardholder's information

Debit Card

Debit cards are the second largest e-commerce payment medium in India. Customers who want to spend online within their financial limits prefer to pay with their Debit cards. With the debit card, the customer can only pay for purchased goods with the money that is already there in his/her bank account as opposed to the credit card where the amounts that the buyer spends are billed to him/her and payments are made at the end of the billing period.

Smart Card

It is a plastic card embedded with a microprocessor that has the customer’s personal information stored in it and can be loaded with funds to make online transactions and instant payment of bills. The money that is loaded in the smart card reduces as per the usage by the customer and has to be reloaded from his/her bank account.

E-Wallet

E-Wallet is a prepaid account that allows the customer to store multiple credit cards, debit card and bank account numbers in a secure environment. This eliminates the need to key in account information every time while making payments. Once the customer has registered and created E-Wallet profile, he/she can make payments faster.

Netbanking

This is another popular way of making e-commerce payments. It is a simple way of paying for online purchases directly from the customer’s bank. It uses a similar method to the debit card of paying money that is already there in the customer’s bank. Net banking does not require the user to have a card for payment purposes but the user needs to register with his/her bank for the net banking facility. While completing the purchase the customer just needs to put in their net banking id and pin.

Mobile Payment

One of the latest ways of making online payments are through mobile phones. Instead of using a credit card or cash, all the customer has to do is send a payment request to his/her service provider via text message; the customer’s mobile account or credit card is charged for the purchase. To set up the mobile payment system, the customer just has to download a software from his/her service provider’s website and then link the credit card or mobile billing information to the software.

Amazon Pay

Another convenient, secure and quick way to pay for online purchases is through Amazon Pay. Use your information which is already stored in your Amazon account credentials to log in and pay at leading merchant websites and apps. Your payment information is safely stored with Amazon and accessible on thousands of websites and apps where you love to shop.

If you are planning to sell your products online, Amazon would be happy to help you in setting up payment gateways for your products and services. You can also consider selling on Amazon, one of the most popular e-commerce platforms in the world. To sell on Amazon, you can register to sell online for free.

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