Tuesday 19 April 2016

OpenCart Website - PayPal Payment Checkout Process

OpenCart is an open-source and user-friendly eCommerce platform to develop online stores. Offering a robust platform using simple PHP code, OpenCart makes it easy for users to customize and enhance their online business ventures. The OpenCart shopping cart is feature-rich and also offers an array of OpenCart Payment Modules, which makes it easier for your site to offer a smooth payment transaction process to customers.
OpenCart PayPal Payment Advanced Module
In the eCommerce business domain, payment gateway assumes significance to help merchants to process the payment transaction in a safe and secure manner. Many eCommerce merchants favor, PayPal payment gateway, because the PayPal Payment Modules when integrated with OpenCart site offers the best payment transaction experience to both the merchants as well as customers. A globally reckoned payment processor, PayPal is designed to cater to all the requirements of merchants. Also, it accepts all major credit and debit cards such as Visa, MasterCard, Switch / Maestro, etc.

Different types of PayPal payment options
  • PayPal Standard
The PayPal standard is absolutely free of charge and permits the OpenCart store merchants to accept credit card payments. But the downside of PayPal Standard is that it does not allow your customer to complete the checkout process on your website. Instead, the customer is redirected to PayPal’s website to pay for the products purchased. Because customers need to leave your site to make payment transactions, there is the likelihood that many of the customers will abandon your site and shift to other sites for making a purchase.
  • PayPal Website Payments Pro
On the other end of the spectrum of payment process, PayPal also extends a high end PayPal payment facility called the Website Payments Pro. With this version of PayPal, merchants can process credit cards directly on their site itself. Moreover, the PayPal Pro charges $30 per month and provides OpenCart site owners a complete solution to all credit card processing requirements. Yet, since you are accepting credit cards on your own server, you need to access PCI compliance. The PCI compliance is a set of norms enacted by the credit card community to ensure that all credit card transactions are safe and secure. In order to be PCI compliant, your site must follow a set of guidelines to process credit cards on your site. Nonetheless, by using the PayPal Pro on your OpenCart store, customers can experience a seamless payment transaction.
  • PayPal Advanced
PayPal Advanced is a type of hybrid solution between the PayPal Website Payments Pro and PayPal Standard. Akin to PayPal Website Payments Pro, customers are able to process their credit card payment online without the need to leave your website. In the PayPal Advanced option, the credit card information is processed on PayPal’s server using the iframe. With the result, using the PayPal Advanced module, you need not worry about PCI compliance.

Conclusion

Thus, online merchants can integrate PayPal eCommerce Payment Modules such as the PayPal Standard package with their OpenCart platform, or use the more versatile PayPal Website Payments Pro or the PayPal Advanced module, in order to customize your checkout page and to make your brand more memorable among your customers.  Through accessing the services of an eCommerce Website Development professional, you can decide on the type of PayPal module to be integrated into your OpenCart site.