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How to Integrate a Payment Gateway into Your Mobile Application

Development Workflow
Mobile App Payments

Smartphones have become a universal tool for solving a variety of tasks, including being a convenient payment method for goods and services. Users fully appreciate the convenience of mobile payments, and this market segment is gaining momentum.

There is a rule in market sales that will never lose its relevance: the easier it is to make a payment, the higher the probability that the customer will make a purchase. This is especially true for e-commerce and mobile payments, where any complexity in the payment process can be a severe challenge for conversion.

According to the BI Intelligence report, by 2020 the mobile payment market in the US will exceed $500 billion. You must admit that the figures give pause for thought.

US Mobile In-Store Payment Volume

This can become a valuable driver for business growth and a key component in the development strategy. But not everyone understands how to organize everything correctly. In this article, we will show you how to integrate a payment gateway into a mobile app in order to quickly and easily accept payments from customers.

How Do Mobile Payments Work?

The payment gateway is responsible for the transfer of payment data between the buyer, the sending bank, the receiving bank, the payment system and the seller. There are quite a lot of payment gateways, but not all of them are universal enough to be able to use them for products that are targeted at the entire world.

The developing team embeds the form of accepting payments to the app. The form transfers a request to the bank for the purchase payment via SSL protocol. Thus, the transaction is made if the system approves the transaction and the customer’s account has enough money.

How do mobile payments work

The payment module is built into the mobile app with the help of a ready-made software development kit (SDK). With its help, the mobile app transmits purchase data to the receiving bank, and then to the payment system and the sending bank that issued the buyer’s card.

Usually SDKs are available for iOS and Android, and the function of accepting payments can be integrated both at the mobile app development stage and into the finished product.

The use of the SDK solves two problems simultaneously – it gives the seller a tool for accepting payment by payment cards and eliminates the need to pass certification for PCI DSS (PCI SSC – Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council) standards.

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3 Most Popular Payment Gateways for Mobile App

Let’s take a closer look at the most popular payment gateways services used by mobile apps developers.

The main advantage of using payment gateways is that all technical issues are solved on the aggregator side, so all you need to do is to integrate it into the app through the SDK. Then, you can concentrate on product development and increasing the audience.

Stripe

Stripe payment preocessing platform
This platform was originally created with a focus on mobile app developers, so the developers of the payment gateway tried to make the payment gateway integration as simple as possible. Stripe features a simple interface, convenient API, extensive customization options and multiple libraries that support Android, iOS, Java, Ruby and others.

There is a detailed documentation available on the official website, which is aimed at simplifying the integration for developers.

Key features of Stripe:

  • works in 25 countries;
  • charge rate: 2.9% from the transaction amount + 30 cents;
  • billing on a single and regular basis;
  • acceptance of payments in more than 100 currencies, including bitcoin;
  • ability to create beautiful custom forms for payment;
  • there is no installation fee or monthly fee, only upon use.

PayPal Payments Pro

PayPal
This is probably the most well known payment service that is widely used in e-commerce, and is also good for mobile apps. It is an ideal choice for developers who do not have much experience in connecting payment gateways, but need a high-quality working solution.

To make it work, you need to create a special account, which then gets bound to a specific app. Paypal’s level of trust from both buyers and sellers is very high. More information for developers can be found at this link.

Key features of PayPal:

  • ability to accept payments from 190 countries;
  • support for 26 types of currencies and 5 types of payment cards;
  • high level of transaction security;
  • one-time payments and repeated billing;
  • charge rate: 2.9% from the transaction + 30 cents.

Among the drawbacks, there is a limit of $10,000 for a single transaction and a monthly subscription fee of $35.

Braintree

Braintree payment gateway
This is a subsidiary of PayPal, which is primarily focused on the mobile payment market, and serves many large market players such as Uber and AirBnB. This service can be called the most progressive, and those who already use it emphasize their good technical support that responds to requests very quickly.

The process of the payment gateway integration into a mobile app is quite simple; the creators of Braintree have managed to make it so that just a few lines of code need to be written. All the necessary documentation is available here.

Key features of Braintree:

  • 24-hour technical support;
  • direct integration with PayPal and support for 130 currencies;
  • free of charge maintenance until your turnover reaches $50,000 (after that, 2.9% of the transaction);
  • available in 40 countries;
  • you can set up re-billing;
  • no monthly payments or installation fees.

These players offer in many respects similar opportunities, a high level of payment protection, with slight differences in terms of convenience, commissions and connection features. In order to make a final decision, we recommend that you learn more about the conditions of connection and maintenance on their official websites.

Want to start a project?

Our team is ready to implement your ideas. Contact us now to discuss your roadmap!

Things You Need to Know Before Implementing Mobile Payments into Your App

Most likely, mobile payments are the key for you to start making money on your product. If this is the case, then you definitely need to study everything well before starting to take the first steps. And here are a number of important things you should know about:

  1. If your apps are added to the App Store and Google Play, you, as a developer, will have to pay a 30% commission to the app store to pay for purchases of digital content. In this case, you do not need to connect third-party services, just integrate StoreKit for iOS or In-App Billing API for Android.
  2. If you are selling tangible goods or services, you need to connect a third-party payment gateway like we listed in this article. One of the advantages is the fact that you will not have to pay a commission to Apple and Google.
  3. One of the reasons why customers refuse to pay is the additional costs that appear at the last stage of the transaction. Therefore, you need to clearly display the final amount for payment, already including shipping, processing commissions, etc. In fact, this is more relevant for tangible goods and services.
  4. Pay attention to Apple Pay and Android Pay. These systems are the future, and the level of users’ trust in them is high. Having installed them into your app, by combining them with one of the popular payment processors, you can get a higher conversion rate.

Conclusion

By offering an opportunity for users to easily pay for goods and services directly through your mobile application, you can bring your business to a new level. This can be an extremely important condition for effective development of commercial products.

Of course, finding the most suitable solution for a mobile payment function integration that will fully meet your needs may not be such a simple task. But we hope that our article will help you get a clear idea of how this works and choose the best option for yourself.

Do you have a great idea for a start-up and now you are facing the task of integrating a payment gateway into a mobile app? We will help you to do it quickly and with a high level of quality. Contact us, and let’s discuss your requirements together so that we can start working.

August 14, 2018

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