Paypal Checkout Preference – Direct vs Redirect

  • Resolved Moobs

    (@nickyb713)


    10 years, 2 months ago

    So I’m about to start developing my first E-commerce site, and I decided to stick with Paypal over stripe. I’m just curious to hear what most customers prefer at checkout whether it’s staying on the site or being redirected to paypal.

    I want customers to feel as comfortable as possible. To me redirects have that peace of mind vs convenience trade-off. But Paypal redirects have been around for so long that it may be more generally accepted now and less of an inconvenience.

    Another option of course would be to take care of the paypal transaction in an smaller iFrame.

    The domain will have SSL regardless, so I can always do paypal direct payments. The only drawback is that it’s a new company and business, so people may be more cautious about entering their credit card information.

    But those are just some general thoughts. I’d like to hear what you guys do or what has worked for you in the past.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Moderator James Huff

    (@macmanx)

    In my experience, many customers prefer to be redirected to the payment provider when the merchant is new, or to have the payment provider open in an iframe on the page itself. It feels more secure to them, knowing that money is going straight to the entity which handles the money, and not passing through a merchant they have never heard of before.

    A perfect example of this would be how Kickstarter’s payment processor was Amazon, and all actions to manage payments were directed over to Amazon. Kickstarter was still a new thing to many people, but Amazon wasn’t, so there was certain level of comfort knowing that an established entity was handling the money.

    With that said, many big merchants prefer to hide the payment processor in the background, as it helps them to establish a better brand.

    A perfect example of this would be Kickstarter today, which has abandoned the up-front Amazon Payments for the background Stripe. All actions to manage payments are now done through Kickstarter. Kickstarter has made a name for themselves now, they have established credibility and trust, so they figure it’s time for them to stop being “Kickstarter powered by Amazon Payments” and just be Kickstarter.

    So, that’s a lot of words to say that you should pick whichever you think feels right. As a consumer, I always feel safer interacting directly with the payment processor when buying from a new-ish merchant. On the other hand, you have probably never seen the payment processor when dealing with Amazon, Apple, Google, your hosting provider, your domain registrar, your favorite grocery store, etc.

    I think as consumers we’re used to both ways, so the question is, as a merchant, what do you want? ??

    Thread Starter Moobs

    (@nickyb713)

    Great, thanks a lot appreciate the input. I’m leaning towards redirect, it may be a bit cleaner than dealing w/ iframe across all platforms as well.

    Moderator James Huff

    (@macmanx)

    You’re welcome!

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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