Electronic Payments

Preparing for an electronic payment system

To implement an electronic payment system you will need:

• an account with an established Internet Service Provider, ideally a broadband service

• a working domain name such as www.yourdomain.co.uk

• a professional, dynamic website (written in a scripting language such as ASP, ColdFusion or PHP, JSP)

• an online database or some means of storing product and order information

• an online form or a shopping cart package to capture credit card information

• an internet merchant account to accept payments, a secure server and secure links to your bank or a PSP to handle transactions.

You will also need to prepare your website.

• Make sure your website works well enough to justify adding further facilities. If not, consider upgrading first - online shoppers are notoriously fickle. If a web page takes too long to download or a click doesn't deliver a fast enough response, they'll be off to a rival site.

• Visit other online stores to see how the most efficient sites and checkout systems work. It should be easy to navigate forward and back through the purchasing process.

• Make sure your site is bang up-to-date with inventory listings and that your stock checking, sales processing and delivery options are effective.

• Customers are impatient. Consider one-time sign-in services such as .NET's Passport. This enables customers to create a digital ID certificate (rather like an online passport) that both authenticates and authorises its owner to enter Passport-enabled sites without re-keying personal information. These services can also allow customers to create an "online wallet" that stores billing and shipping information and could, potentially, handle payments.

• Make sure that final invoices and delivery details are clearly displayed and that the customer receives copies. Provide as many channels as possible for customers to contact you if necessary, including a phone number (not a mobile) and a postal address (not a PO Box) for customers - this helps develop trust.

• Make sure your terms and conditions for accepting electronic payments are legally watertight, comprehensible and prominently displayed.