2024’s Best Online Payment Tools For Small Businesses

If you’re a retailer that sells goods or services online, you need to be able to offer your customers an easy, fast and secure way to pay. Today’s consumers are much more digitally literate than they used to be, and they will recognise an unusual or antiquated online payment service—and this could deter them from going through the checkout process.

So if you’ve got an established online presence or you’re just starting out, what are 2024’s best online payment tools for small businesses?

Paypal

You might be more aware of PayPal as a tool for sending money to friends and family, but it is also one of the most popular online payment tools for small businesses.

PayPal is probably the best-known name in online payments, and that long established pedigree means your customers will feel confident in using it for buying your products and services—one of the most important factors to consider when choosing your online payment service. That reputation is well deserved too, because PayPal boasts robust security measures to keep your (and your customers’) money safe. All transactions and payments are encrypted, while the company closely monitors transactions and activities processed on the platform.

One downside is that PayPal transactions do incur a relatively high flat fee (2.99%). There can also be other fees, based on whether there’s currency conversion involved or cross-border payments.

Stripe

Stripe is another globally recognised online payment tool that’s ideal for large and growing businesses. It offers a range of flexible tools to help you create bespoke payment processes, such as subscription services, on-demand marketplaces or crowdfunding platforms.

However, the potential complexity of Stripe can also be a downside if you don’t have access to some tech expertise, as it’s not an out-of-the-box solution.

As Stripe is a well-established provider of payment solutions, you can trust that your checkout process will be secure. The platform adheres to the highest levels of PCI compliance.

Another benefit of the service is that there are no setup fees, monthly fees or hidden charges, with Stripe implementing a simple pricing model of 2.9% + 30¢ per successful charge for domestic cards.

Worldpay

Worldpay is the UK’s biggest payment service provider, with over 250,000 British SMEs using the service.

Unlike PayPal and Stripe that implement flat fees for each transaction, with Worldpay you can choose between pay-as-you-go plans or monthly subscriptions, allowing you to select what works best for your business—although contract lengths and termination fees can be off-putting to some businesses.

When it comes to security, Worldpay implements advanced encryption methods, robust fraud monitoring and prevention, and secure data handling and storage.

Evalon

Serving businesses of all sizes globally, Evalon is designed to support companies with complex payment environments, offering a variety of integrations to suit your needs. This includes direct certification, as well as fully integrated, semi-integrated, hosted and gateway integration.

Evalon also utilises state-of-the-art security measures, with their Safe-T solution providing authentication, encryption and tokenisation in a single package.

The service also offers multiple transaction fee models to help businesses find the right payment solution for their needs.

Payline

Payline is a flexible online payment solution used by a variety of businesses ranging from startups to major corporations, with plenty of integrations and advanced features.

Payline integrates with over 175 online shopping carts, offers mobile solutions to allow you to accept payment via mobile apps, and integrates with QuickBooks to make payroll management easier.

The platform also offers a competitive online transaction rate of 0.75%, although there is an additional flat monthly fee to be aware of. If your business only deals with a smaller volume of online orders, it might be better to choose a solution that only charges a flat transaction rate.

Ayden

Ayden is used by the likes of Uber, LinkedIn, eBay and Microsoft, and offers a range of advanced features to support online transactions, including the ability to combine payment processing with useful data analytics. However, the service is best suited to larger businesses.

The drawback to Ayden is that the pricing structure is relatively complex, and there’s also a minimum number of monthly transactions required.

Opayo

Opayo is probably better known as Sage Pay and is one of the UK’s most trusted and widely used online payment service providers.

One of the biggest selling points of Opayo is its data security, with all transaction information encrypted and stored on highly secure systems, with the data transmitted to the banking network via private links.

Opayo can be used to receive fast and secure online payments (including in-store via standalone or integrated terminals) as well as process phone and postal orders.

The downsides of the platform are that it posts individual charges daily, which can make bank reconciliation confusing, and that it’s missing graphical breakdowns of payments and taxes.

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If you’re a startup or small business, and you need support in choosing the ideal online payment tool, why not get in touch with the team here at Warr & Co? We offer a wide range of business accounting services to suit your specific requirements, including bookkeeping, tax and VAT services, auditing and much more.

Drop us a line to get started, or request your free, no obligation consultation where we’ll help you to identify exactly what your business needs to take it to the next level.