How To Choose A PayNow Provider For Your Shopify Store

As we all know, PayNow is a secure and real-time funds transfer service in Singapore. For peer-to-peer and person-to-merchant transactions. Using their participating bank accounts.

We recently decided to add PayNow as a payment mode. For one of our ecommerce stores in Singapore.

We had, of course, already been accepting credit cards. Via the default Shopify Payments. As well as PayPal. From the very outset.

Shopify currently lists five different PayNow providers:

• 2C2P

• Airwallex

• HitPay

• Opn Payments

• Razer Merchant Services

All are full-fledged certified financial service platforms. Offering a comprehensive range of online payment solutions. Including electronic wallets, accelerated checkout methods, direct debit, Buy-Now-Pay-Later etc.

Of course, we were only interested in integrating PayNow.

Sharing the criteria we used. To select one out of the five.

Some of this information was available on their websites. For the rest, we had to enquire via email and phone.

• Number of years offering PayNow: The oldest of these has been offering it since it was originally launched in 2017!

• Ease of integration with Shopify: Some of these five were Apps/plug-ins. That could be added to our Shopify store directly. Whereas the others could only be set up via API. Requiring some level of coding knowledge.

• Buyer's checkout experience:

• While all providers mentioned a one-page checkout, they would, in fact, redirect the buyer. To their secure third-party URL.

• While the rest would add their button only after the buyer added the item to his/her cart, one of the providers would actually add a banner to the product page itself.

• Automatic versus manual payment capture on Shopify: The Apps/plug-ins offered only automatic capture. Whereas the ones that worked via API allowed developers to configure manual payment capture. As well.

• Payout settlement period: The five Providers differed in their settlement window. Ranging from next day (ie T+1) to twelve days after the transaction (T+12)!

• Merchant support:

• Channels: Hotline, live chat, WhatsApp/Telegram and/or email.

• Timings: 5 days a week. Versus 7 days a week.

• Setup fee: All five providers had waived this. At least for 2023.

• Annual fee: One of the five had a renewal fee payable every year.

• Transaction charges: All five providers applied a percentage of the transaction value as their fee. Some levied additional flat charges. For transactions exceeding a certain threshold value.

• Refund fees: Some providers imposed a flat fee for every refund. Others did not but would retain their transaction fees in the event of a refund.

There you are! We made our choice based on the above.

Are there other criteria you considered as a merchant? When making this choice? Please let us all know by commenting below. Happy and safe online selling!

Until next time. :)