How to Integrate Payment Gateways in Mobile Apps? – A Complete Guide

We just love the feeling of smoothly transferring amounts into the respective accounts with our smartphones and getting our products in return, Right? The integral payment gateways in the eCommerce stores have simplified seamless transactions and have acquired a dominating spot. In-app purchases have already turned out to be a standard for any eCommerce application, and clients expect it from a high-quality application with top-notch service. This trend doesn’t seem to go anywhere soon, it is only going to cultivate and evolve. 

It is expected that mobile payment volume will increase in large numbers by the end of 2021! According to the research, 35 million Americans along with others own smartphones and have accepted online payment methods. It is estimated that these users will take the online payment transaction volume hit to $275 billion by 2022. We are living in a period where online shopping and e-commerce business solutions have become the demand of the day. This has facilitated the e-commerce apps to implement and integrate the payment gateways in mobile apps that can complete the online transaction with just a couple of clicks.

Mobile payments have occupied center stage lately by providing a fast and easy way to make purchases, they help users to save time and enjoy a seamless shopping experience. Since many people prefer to shop online, mobile payment gateway integration offers businesses a great competitive benefit. The users can make easy payments for availing themselves several services such as purchasing an item from an e-commerce site, booking train or flight tickets, hotel reservations, booking a cab, and so on. Also, payment gateways in mobile apps have been a great helping hand in thriving the sales because now making a payment is as easy as an apple pie. There is a wide choice of payment gateways in mobile apps from which you can choose: they have different audiences, rules, fees, and conditions. Before we move ahead with the payment gateway integration procedure, let’s understand the definition of it.

What is a Payment Gateway? And why should you integrate it?

Why do you need payment gateways for your mobile applications?
Why should you integrate Payment Gateways?

In simple words, a payment gateway is a business software that handles online transactions and transfers an amount between the customer and seller. This technology permits customers to integrate credit & debit cards to make payments through mobile applications. It gathers necessary information from the consumer and sends it to the banks. Funds movement into the interbank network is a complex arrangement of operations that creates risks mainly associated with security assurance. Although for the end-user, a mobile money transfer takes only a few seconds, a huge quantity of work is hidden under the hood.

Luckily, the bank is accountable for all transactions and data safety. How do you provide this information to the bank? How do you check that the user has funds on their account and belongs to the customer? What will happen if the base gets into the wrong hands? Who will be answerable for this? Mobile app developers and business owners should not bear the liability. Particularly since not everyone can get the opportunity to carry out financial operations and store user and billing info. Also, to keep such data and work directly with banks, it is essential to pass a complex licensing procedure of PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard), which can take months. Integrating payment gateway in mobile apps is what will do the whole thing for you.

Payment gateway integration in an app is significant, particularly if the app deals with hotel reservations, grocery shopping, travel bookings, salon booking, etc.

How to integrate payment gateways in mobile apps {Android and iOS applications}

How to integrate payment gateways in Android and iOS mobile applications
Payment gateway integration in Android and iOS apps

Before we go into detail about how to set up online payment gateways in mobile apps, there is one thing worth stating. Occasionally, you might hear about the Google Play Billing solution and In-App Purchase from Apple, these are the services for selling digital content on mobile devices. As purchasing mechanisms, they allow buying content that is only found classified in your Android or iOS app. Google Play Billing and In-App Purchase take a big bite out of the merchant’s profits charging 30% transaction fees. So, when selling this type of in-app products or services, a merchant will only receive 70%.

Also Read: Mobile App Development Trends

iOS App Development Trends

Alternatively, the third-party payment gateway software has nothing to do with digital purchases but they open the door for selling physical goods and services outside an Android or iOS app. This process of integrating payment gateway in Android apps and iOS apps are made in quite a few steps and involve the use of the following components:

1. Client and server SDKs

Every payment gateway provider offers its software development kit or SDK, which can be found on the providers’ official websites and used by the developers to attach the existing app functionality and simplify work. The provider’s client and server SDKs act in concert to allow collecting and handling payment information.

2. APIs

The gateway API keys help organize SDKs and libraries as a significant part of integrating payment gateways in mobile applications. If sellers are keen to exercise more control over the checkout experience, they have to go for APIs.

3. Third-party apps

Using the third-party apps, you can easily do the payment gateway integration in Android apps and iOS apps with a gateway provider with just about no prior programming experience.

What do you need to consider before implementing payment gateways in mobile apps?

integrating payment gateways in your mobile app? read this first
Things to consider before integrating payment gateways

Before you start executing the plan, you need to think about all the details thoroughly. We have come up with a list of subjects to take into account during your strategic planning phase so that you could witness its worthwhile effects afterward.

1. A Merchant Account

A Merchant account allows accepting payments that go through the payment gateways and payment processors settling your transactions. There are mainly two types of merchant accounts: dedicated and aggregate. The dedicated merchant account provides its owners with the corresponding Merchant ID numbers that make their businesses easier to classify, more stable, and protected from all kinds of fraud. With this, account owners get extra control over transactions and take less time to complete with the dedicated account. But these benefits will come after paying extra.

The Aggregate merchant account gives you the privilege of not paying account fees and not dealing with extended contract terms. It turns the payment gateway into an aggregator shared by several businesses, that too by the same payment gateway provider for mobile apps.

2. An Integrated Gateway

Payment gateways in mobile apps can be either hosted off-site or integrated directly into your store. Hosted gateways redirect customers to online payment service providers’ platforms where payment info is collected and processed. This method is possible if the provider is familiar with your customers and they will not be afraid when directed off your website or app. Payment gateways integrated in mobile applications, in their turn, are associated with your website or mobile app through APIs, which creates a seamless user experience but still includes more mobile app development effort. 

3. The Gateway API and Payment Request API

It progresses the method of checkout, helps purchase one API call and requires that your mobile app users complete fewer steps. Moreover, online payment service providers can offer their payment APIs, which is another great option you can get benefit from.

4. Security certificates

Payment gateways drive with sensitive data, that is credit or debit card numbers and other personal information that cannot be revealed. The term Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) has to be no strange to those who want to implement payment gateways in mobile apps. Being compliant with this set of policies and regulations is a must for sellers handling online transactions. Some payment gateways in mobile applications can help you to make it easier to get PCI-DSS compliant but the others cannot. With or without this support, you have to avoid keeping the sensitive data outside your app server and store it in your databases after a transaction is done.

5. Ease of implementation and maintenance

And lastly, the ease of integration, which can be an important consideration from the developers’ perspective. How easy to use SDKs are, whether they are mobile platform-specific or allow implementation in a programming language of your choice, these are some of the key elements inspiring the decision to work with an individual online payment service provider.

Some of the most popular and best Payment Gateway Providers

At present, there are ample payment gateway implementations that have both strong and weak sides. For example, some support over a hundred currencies, some accept crypto currencies or even emphasize them, some establish further security safeguards. Since everything depends on your business needs, you should express your goals, estimate the budget, explore various payment gateways for mobile apps, and choose the best payment gateway for mobile applications.

Most popular Payment Gateway Providers - paypal, stripe, braintree
Most popular Payment Gateway Providers

Let’s see some of the most popular payment gateways for mobile applications.

#1 PayPal

One of the efficient and best payment gateways in mobile apps used by several industry-leading apps is PayPal. It has gained popularity ever since it was introduced in the form of a digital wallet. Many people have a preference to use PayPal for online shopping or booking tickets. The usage of PayPal SDK mobile lets you accept Bitcoin, credit card payments, etc. It is undoubtedly the leader of all payment gateways and extends support all over the world. It accepts payments in nearly 26 currencies and successfully processes 5-10 million payments every day. It holds about 60.2 % share in the global market. PayPal is supported by over 200 countries and unites 277 million users. Walmart, eBay, and Adobe are among its biggest clients. It is a trustworthy and secured payment gateway on the list. 

#2 Stripe

Stripe is one more popular payment gateway for businesses that is easy and secure. Presently, Stripe is used in more than 100 countries and supports debit and credit cards, Bitcoin, Apple Pay, Android Pay, and Amex Express Checkout. Lyft, Postmates, Instacart, DoorDash, TaskRabbit, and Grab are among its well-known customers. It has a simple design that offers a lot of opportunities for the developers to provide customization and allows them to manage APIs easily to develop a tailored mobile application. 

One of the features that differentiate Stripe is the ability to transfer data of the credit card to a new payment gateway. Stripe provides technical and banking infrastructure for operating online payment systems and also ensures safe data storage and avoid fraud, the service continuously monitors the network for suspicious activities. Stripe charges 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction. Stripe provides outstanding customer service which helps it win mostly positive reviews from middle-sized and big businesses for which it is better-equipped.

#3 Braintree

A subsidiary of PayPal is Braintree, it supports over 45 countries in the world and technically remains in the list of top 5 payment gateways. Braintree claims to support around 130 currencies and accept Apple Pay, Android Pay, and Alipay, AMEX, Visa, JCB, MasterCard, and other cards, and can be integrated with more than 300 applications. Airbnb, Uber, Yelp, Dropbox, and other popular businesses use the Braintree service. The mobile app payment gateway comes with a Software Development Kit that is written in seven different languages for iOS and Android app development. It charges 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction.

The other options of popular payment gateways in the mobile app available on the list are Dwolla, Square, EziDebit, Zooz, Authorize.net, Amazon Payment, and many others. Study well before you end up with the final selection of payment gateways for your mobile app, which completely depends on your business requirements.

Conclusion

Finding a payment gateway solution that comes across your requirements takes time and effort, as does a payment systems integration itself. If you are dealing with any kind of transaction, you should permit accepting payments in your mobile app. The use of a payment gateway in mobile apps will become a competitive advantage as you will automate online money transfers by making them last for quite a few seconds instead of several days.

A payment gateway is a connecting link between the bank and customer that eliminates the worry related to safe data storage, fraud detection, and transaction security. 

9 thoughts on “How to Integrate Payment Gateways in Mobile Apps? – A Complete Guide

  1. I was confused about the payment gateways to integrate in my eCommerce app. Your blog really helped me making decision.
    Thanks a lot!

  2. Hi admin,
    I was looking for information on integrating payment gateways in an iOS application and gladly found your post. Thank you so much for sharing this post.

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