How to Choose A Payment Gateway For Your Online Pharmacy Startup

Ever since Covid-19 wreaked havoc in India, the online pharmacy industry has grown multifold in the country. A report by FICCI said that more than 70% users are willing to use e-pharmacy seeing the benefits of using such websites during the peak time of Covid-19.

The e-pharmacy market itself is expected to grow at a CAGR of 21.28% between 2021 and 2027.

Just like buying clothes, electronic items, and other products online, users are quickly warming up to the idea of ordering medicines online. In addition to buying medicines, online consumers are even booking appointments for diagnostic tests.

While the e-pharmacy market is growing fast, there is only one thing that is limiting the industry: a convenient online payment system. A payment gateway for pharmacy companies needs to offer specific services that are needed for this industry such as enabling subscription payments, quick payment processing, etc.

If you run an online pharmacy store and are looking for a payment gateway that your users can trust, this article is for you.

Five basic features to look for in a payment gateway

Working with payment gateways and deciding which one to partner with involves a lot of factors. For a new online medicine company, it might get intimidating as well.

Here is a list of things you should consider before zeroing on a payment gateway.

  • Support for all payment options: While paying online, customers prefer to pay using the payment option they are comfortable with. If they don’t see the payment option that they want to use, the chances are they will abandon the cart. The payment gateway you select should provide you with all the payment options so that you don’t lose customers.
  • High success rate: A payment gateway for pharmacy companies should be able to promise the industry-best success rate. Payment failure is one of the top reasons why customers stop trusting an online merchant. Even one payment failure can affect your reputation among your users.
  • Instant activation: Before deciding which payment gateway you are going to partner with, you might want to check their onboarding process. Many payment gateways take days and require you to submit hard copies of your documents for verification. Partner with a payment gateway that can process activation instantly and have a digital document verification system.
  • Secure payment system: When customers pay online on your website, they trust your platform with their personal information. A payment gateway for pharmacy startups must have a robust, secure payment system in place to ensure that customers’ sensitive information is not compromised and that the bank details are encrypted.
  • Quick settlement: Once customers make the payment for their medicine purchase, your bank account will get credit in about 2-4 working days in general. It is advised that you partner with a payment gateway that takes the least amount of time to complete the settlement process. More the delay in settlement, the more liquidity problems you may face.

Paytm Payment Gateway provides businesses with all of these features and more. The onboarding process at Paytm PG is 100% digital, which allows you to start accepting money online from day one. Moreover, with a T+1 settlement period on business days, Paytm Payment Gateway offers the fastest settlement in the industry.

With Paytm PG, you can rest assured that almost all the payments will go through successfully. As an additional measure, our system preempts whether a bank’s server is down, which might delay or affect the payment. In such a case, we prompt customers to use a different card or payment mode. These add-on measures are put in place to ensure every payment is successful.

Interesting Read: Perks of Supporting Multiple Payment Methods to Receive Online Payments

As far as security is concerned, Paytm Payment Gateway is compliant with PCI-DSS rules. Users’ all sensitive bank information is end-to-end encrypted.

Why Paytm Payment Gateway is the best for online pharmacy startups

Online pharmacy startups are different from other online companies as they have to deal with urgency. A lot of e-pharmacy startups in India are an extension of their physical shops. Those with omnichannel platforms have to enable digital payments for customers who come in the shop as well as online buyers. That is why the requirements that you, as an online pharmacy owner, will have are unique from others.

Here is what Paytm Payment Gateway has to offer online pharmacy companies:

  • All payment sources: Give your customers the freedom to pay via any payment source they are comfortable with. Paytm Payment Gateway empowers your customers to pay via debit and credit cards, net banking, Paytm Wallet, UPI, and Paytm Postpaid. Millions of customers have saved their card details on Paytm, which speeds up the payment process as they don’t have to enter their banking details.
  • Payment links: If you are also running a diagnostic centre that accepts online appointments from customers, Paytm Payment Links might be the best way to accept payment. Very often customers pay half the price at the time of depositing the test specimen and the rest when they collect the report. Now with reports getting delivered online, you can collect the rest of the payment online as well.

Simply create a Paytm Payment Link from the dashboard and share it with your customers via email, SMS, or WhatsApp. Customers can pay using the link with just a couple of clicks.

  • Subscription: Most e-pharmacy companies have customers who suffer from chronic diseases. Such customers would usually buy the same medicines of the same quantity every month. Instead of them placing an order and paying for it every month, you can offer them a subscription service. Paytm Payment Gateway allows you to let customers subscribe for their recurring purchases.

Subscriptions are beneficial for you as well as your customers. You will have a steady stream of income and your customers will never have to worry about placing an order before their medicines get over.

  • Tokenisation: The Reserve Bank of India has directed online businesses to stop storing users’ sensitive card details on their database unless these details are tokenised. Payment through saved cards is very important for online businesses like e-pharmacy because it expedites the payment process. But worry not, Paytm Payment Gateway is equipped with tokenising customers’ card details. We will ensure you comply with the RBI’s regulations and allow your customers to save their cards securely.
  • Instant refund: Customers who shop online take refunds for granted and assume that your online pharmacy store will refund the money in case there is a need for one. Processing refunds is complex as it is a different ball game altogether. Depending on the payment mode the refund time can take anywhere between 5 to 30 days.

However, with Paytm Payment Gateway, you can refund the money to your customer’s accounts in a couple of days. You can leverage our special offering Paytm Payouts to refund the money instantly.

Frequently Asked Questions

Question: What is a payment gateway?

Answer: A payment gateway is a technology that acts as a middleman to connect businesses, customers, and their bank accounts to process online payments securely. A payment gateway communicates between the bank, the card processing company, and the merchant’s bank to transfer the money.

Question: What is the success rate in payment gateway?

Answer: Businesses like yours should check the success rate of payment gateways to decide if it’s the right fit for you. The success rate of a payment gateway can be calculated by finding out what proportion of its total transactions were processed without any failure.

Question: Does Paytm Payment Gateway provide any kind of payment analysis?

Answer: Yes, you can find out a lot of information from our special offering Payment Analytics. Get in-depth information about your customers’ payment behaviour, analyse trends, and find out which payment flow is getting a better response from customers, among many other things. Find out more about payment analytics.

Question: How can an e-pharmacy startup personalise the checkout page and process?

Answer: If you wish to personalise the checkout page with your company logo and other branding elements, Paytm provides Custom UI SDK that allows you to do exactly that. With custom checkout experience, you own your customers’ payment experience.

 

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