I’m not sure if I’m posting this piece in a correct section or not. Let me know if it happens to land into wrong section.
Recently I looking for some good and cheap payment gateway vendors, for my small e-commerce application. The target client base is all Indian and currency would be all INR. I ran into issues like – If I get services of vendors based out of US, then I save on cost involved, but then I have to deal with only credit cards. And If I want to support internet banking and debit card usage then I have to use the vendor services available in India, which is quite costly.
From here I started thinking of building my own payment gateway and I was stuck up soon with so many hurdles in my way. I don’t know how to develop a payment gateway, the technologies involved, the kind of logistics required, how to get the banks on board for online banking and all. I’m hoping to get some directions from all the experienced people here on VentureWoods.
Thanks,
Suhas
- Online vouchers – SaaS approach - February 3, 2009
- Designing/Developing a payment gateway - December 21, 2007
- Google joins band of angels - July 25, 2007
Check out the link below. This offers a good insight into business models of payment gateways.
http://sudhanshuraheja.com/2007/03/e-commerce-and-payment-gateways.html
Liked what Mohan said. Your strength I guess is in that E-Com app that you developed. Make that feature rich, user friendly and as utilitarian as possible. When you get more users on board, economies of scale will work in your favor and you can negotiate with the gateway vendor/banks/credit card companies for better rates. Why re-invent the wheel…?
It is worthwhile developing a payment gateway only if it is your primary biz. It involves tie up with banks, credit card cos etc which is very painful to manage unless it is a core activity. It takes a year or so to set it up well. You would be better off factoring the variable cost rather than doing it yourself.
As far as I know, variable costs do not exceed 5% with minimum being 2.5% (which is slightly higher than what credit card cos charge).
One alternative would be to talk to mobile payment startup cos like mchek, obopay, JiGrahak etc who have these links established and can do with some gravy on the side. I believe these guys charge 2.5%.
Mohan
ah…sounds fimilar…
I was fortunate to work with a company called Bankstar….we developed a application called Pay..which was trying to address the situation….cannot say we succeeded in it alot..
check out http://www.bankstar.com look for payment solution
I haven’t tried it myself but have you checked out http://www.billdesk.com/part_bill.htm ?