Accepting Payments Online: Tips for Small Business Success
How customers pay has shifted toward cards, digital wallets, and payment links, whether they're buying from an online store or paying an invoice. Every one of those payments runs through a processor, and the one you pick shapes what you keep from each sale.
Processors, gateways, wallets, and bank rails each have their own fees, setup requirements, and trade-offs, and the right mix depends on what you sell and who buys it. This guide covers how online payments work, the main payment types, how to set up processing step by step, and what changes when you accept mobile and international payments.
Slash is a business banking platform that now lets approved merchants accept card payments directly on Slash invoices or through embeddable checkout on their own site.¹ Because processing sits alongside your business accounts, cards, and bill pay, you can follow a payment from the customer's card to your account without reconciling across separate tools. Continue reading to learn more.
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Introduction to Online Payments
An online payment is any transaction where a customer pays a business over the internet rather than in person. That covers a card entered at a website checkout, a tap on Apple Pay inside an app, a bank transfer sent to pay an invoice, and a click on a payment link in an email.
Most online card payments follow the same basic path. First comes authorization: the customer submits their payment details, and the request travels to their bank, which checks for available funds and signs of fraud before approving or declining. Next is capture, when the business confirms it wants to collect the approved amount. Finally, settlement is when the funds move from the customer's bank to the business, minus processing fees, typically arriving in the business's bank account a few days later.
Three security standards are worth understanding:
- PCI DSS: The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, the rulebook for any business that handles card data. Hosted checkout pages from major providers take most of the compliance burden off your plate, because card numbers never touch your systems.
- Tokenization: Replaces a card number with a random stand-in value, so even if your database were breached, there would be no usable card data in it.
- 3-D Secure: Adds a verification step, such as a one-time code or a banking app prompt, before a card payment goes through. It can reduce fraud and, for some disputed charges, shift liability away from the merchant.
Different Types of Online Payment Solutions
There's no single way to accept payments online, and most businesses end up combining a few of the methods below. The right mix depends on what your customers expect and what each method costs you:
Credit card processors
Cards remain the default for most online purchases, but they typically carry the highest per-transaction cost and the most exposure to chargebacks. A chargeback happens when a cardholder disputes a charge with their bank; the funds are pulled back from you while the dispute is reviewed, and you may owe a dispute fee on top.
Bank transfers
Bank payments are the lower-cost alternative, especially for larger B2B invoices. ACH debits pull funds directly from a customer's bank account and usually settle within a few business days. Real-time rails like RTP and FedNow move money in seconds, though they're more commonly used to push payments than to power a checkout page.
Buy now pay later services
Buy now, pay later (BNPL) services like Klarna and Afterpay split a purchase into installments; the provider pays you up front and takes on the repayment risk, for a higher merchant fee. Some businesses also accept stablecoins, digital currencies pegged to the U.S. dollar that can settle faster than international wires.
Cryptocurrency payment processors
Cryptocurrency payment processors let customers pay in digital assets like bitcoin or USD stablecoins such as USDC, and many convert the funds to dollars before they reach your account. Settlement can take minutes, and fees can be lower than card processing. The trade-off is that crypto payments generally can't be reversed: that rules out chargebacks, but refunds have to be sent manually.
Setting Up Your Payment Processing System
The steps below follow the process most businesses go through to start accepting online payments, from gathering paperwork to reconciling your first payouts:
Step 1: Gather your business’s information
Payment providers will ask for your legal business name, EIN (your federal tax ID), business address, owner details, and a bank account for payouts. Using a dedicated business bank account keeps customer payments out of personal accounts and makes it far easier to match payouts to sales later.
Step 2: Decide how customers will pay you
An ecommerce store needs a cart and checkout page. A consultancy or agency may never need a cart; invoices with a payment link can cover most of its revenue. Subscription businesses need recurring billing that charges a saved card automatically. Knowing this upfront narrows the list of providers that fit.
Step 3: Choose a provider and complete underwriting
Underwriting is the provider's risk review before approving your account, covering your industry, expected volume, average transaction size, and refund policy. Higher-risk businesses may be approved with a reserve, meaning the provider holds back a portion of incoming funds for a set period to cover potential chargebacks. Give accurate estimates, since volume far above what you reported can trigger payout holds later.
Step 4: Integrate payments into your checkout
You can use a hosted checkout page (fastest, least customizable), embedded payment fields inside your own site (more control), or a plugin for platforms like Shopify or WooCommerce. With Slash, you can embed customizable checkout components into your website using the Slash SDK, a software development kit available to approved users.
Step 5: Configure security and fraud settings
Turn on address verification (AVS) and CVV checks, which confirm the billing address and security code match the issuer's records, and set rules for when 3-D Secure is required. Also set a clear statement descriptor, the business name on a customer's card statement, since an unrecognizable one is a common cause of disputes.
Step 6: Test, launch, and plan reconciliation
Most providers offer a test mode with sample card numbers. Run through successful payments, declines, refunds, and failed 3-D Secure checks before going live. Then confirm your payout schedule and how payouts are reported. Payouts typically arrive net of fees, so your books should record gross sales and processing fees separately rather than just the deposit amount.
How to Accept Mobile Payments for Your Business
Apple Pay and Google Pay are digital wallets that store a tokenized version of the customer's card (a device-specific stand-in number, not the real one). The payment still runs on the underlying card, so it settles like any card payment, and many processors charge their standard card rate.
Typing a card number and billing address on a phone keyboard is where many mobile purchases stall. A wallet replaces that with a single confirmation, which can reduce abandoned checkouts. Digital wallets can also be more secure: your business never receives the real card number, and each payment carries a one-time code that can't be reused.
To enable mobile payments and digital wallet support for your checkout:
- Your processor has to support it. Most major gateways do, and turning wallets on is often a dashboard setting.
- Apple Pay requires domain verification. You register your domain with Apple, usually through your processor, and your site must run on HTTPS.
- You still need a card form. Wallet buttons only appear on devices with the wallet set up, so keep a standard card form as a fallback.
International Payment Processing: Challenges and Considerations
Selling to customers outside the U.S. can open up your business to new revenue, but cross-border payment processing can be much tricker than you may expect. Here's what to plan for before you start accepting international payments.
Cross-border fees
Many processors add a surcharge for cards issued outside the U.S. (often around 1.5% at major providers), and currency conversion can add more on top. Build those costs into international pricing.
Higher decline rates
Cross-border transactions tend to be declined more often, since issuers are more likely to flag a foreign merchant as potential fraud. Local acquiring, meaning processing through a bank in the customer's region, can help approval rates.
Local payment methods
In many markets, cards aren't the preferred way to pay. Offering methods customers already trust, like iDEAL in the Netherlands, Pix in Brazil, or SEPA Direct Debit in the eurozone, can improve conversion abroad.
Authentication and tax rules
In Europe, Strong Customer Authentication rules require an extra verification step, usually 3-D Secure, for many online card payments. If you sell digital products, you may also owe VAT or GST in your customers' countries, even without a physical presence there.
Presentment vs. settlement currency
The presentment currency is what the customer sees and pays in; the settlement currency is what lands in your account. Pricing in local currency usually improves conversion, but your processor converts those funds to dollars, typically with a fee or a markup over the mid-market rate. Some checkouts let customers choose to pay in their home currency at a rate set by the processor. These rates often give the customer a worse deal than their own card's conversion, so use the option carefully.
Exchange rate movement
Rates can shift between a sale and any refund. If a customer pays €100 today and requests a refund next month, the refund may convert at a different rate, leaving you slightly ahead or behind.
Tips for Optimizing Customer Payment Experience
Getting payments running is only the first step, because how the checkout feels to customers affects how many of them finish paying. These practices cover both the checkout itself and what happens after a customer pays, from failed charges to refunds:
Streamlining the checkout process
Offer guest checkout instead of forcing account creation, ask only for the information you need, and enable browser autofill. Show the full total, including shipping and taxes, before the final step, since surprise costs are one of the most common reasons shoppers abandon a cart.
Offering diverse payment options
Consumer brands benefit most from providing a clean card form and support for Apple Pay and Google Pay. B2B businesses should offer ACH or bank transfer for invoices, and may want to consider adding a stablecoin payment option for invoicing, too. Higher-priced consumer goods may see higher order values with BNPL, though the merchant fee is higher. You don't need every option, though; a cluttered payment screen can hurt conversion too.
Recovering failed payments
Soft declines, such as a temporary issuer block or insufficient funds, can succeed on a retry; hard declines, like a closed account, won't. For subscriptions, scheduled retries, card account updater services (which refresh expired or reissued cards automatically), and reminder emails can recover a meaningful share of failed charges.
Handling refunds and disputes
Send receipts immediately, publish a clear refund policy, and make it easy to reach you. A customer who can get a quick refund is less likely to file a chargeback, which costs you the sale plus a dispute fee and can hurt your standing with your processor if disputes pile up.
Keeping payment data connected to your finances
Processor payouts are batched, net of fees, and adjusted for refunds and chargebacks, so reconciling them against a separate bank account becomes a monthly chore. Slash shows gross and net volume, fees, refunds, and chargebacks in the same dashboard as your business accounts, and integrates with accounting software like QuickBooks Online and Xero so you can trace a sale from checkout to deposit in one place.
Accept Your Customer's Payments Online with Slash
Payment processing works best when it isn't cut off from the rest of your finances. With Slash, approved merchants can accept major cards, including Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover, on Slash invoices or through embeddable checkout components with 3-D Secure support.
Gross and net volume, refunds, chargebacks, and payouts all appear in the same dashboard as your business accounts, and two-way sync with QuickBooks Online and Xero keeps your books current.
Here’s what else you get with Slash:
- Slash Visa Platinum Card: Corporate charge cards that can earn up to 2% cash back with granular spend controls, spend limits, and card grouping.
- Business banking: FDIC-insured business checking, protected up to $150M through Column N.A.'s insured cash sweep network.²
- Multiple payment methods: Send and receive funds via same-day ACH, wires on SWIFT to 180+ countries, RTP, FedNow, and stablecoin transfers in USDC or USDT.⁴
- Accounts payable and receivable: Create invoices, track payment status, and collect payments via multiple methods all in your dashboard. For your bills, Slash can parse an uploaded invoice, route each bill for approval, and track its status from pending to paid, so payables don't slip through the cracks.
- Integrated treasury: High-yield treasury accounts earning up to 3.86% annualized yield backed by Morgan Stanley and BlackRock money market funds, with no minimum balance to get started.⁶
- Flexible financing: Access to a line of credit in your Slash dashboard to support cash flow gaps or temporary funding, with 30, 60, or 90 days repayment terms.⁵
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is the cheapest way to accept payments online?
Bank payments like ACH are usually the lowest-cost option, since fees are often a small percentage or a flat amount with a cap. Card payments cost more, but they're what most consumers expect at checkout. Higher-volume businesses may lower card costs by negotiating interchange-plus pricing instead of a flat rate.
PayPal Foreign Transaction Fees: Types & How They Work
Do I need a merchant account to accept credit card payments online?
Not necessarily. Providers like Stripe, Square, and PayPal operate as payment facilitators, meaning they onboard your business under their own master merchant account so you can start accepting cards quickly. The trade-off is that facilitators may be quicker to hold funds or review accounts, while a dedicated merchant account typically involves more paperwork but can offer more stable terms at scale.
Merchant Accounts: How Card Payments Work
Can I accept credit card payments without a website?
Yes. Payment links, invoices with a pay button, and QR codes let customers pay by card without you building a checkout page. This works well for service businesses, freelancers, and anyone selling through social media or direct messages.
The Top Credit Card Processors for Small Businesses Compared
Can I charge customers a fee for paying by credit card?
In many U.S. states, businesses can add a surcharge to credit card payments, but card network rules cap the amount and require clear disclosure before the customer pays. Some states restrict or prohibit surcharging, and surcharges generally can't be applied to debit cards. Check your state's rules and your processor's requirements before adding one.
How long does it take to receive money from online payments?
It depends on the provider and payment method. Card payouts commonly arrive within a few business days of the sale, and some providers offer faster or instant payouts for an extra fee. New accounts may start on a longer payout schedule until the provider sees a track record of low disputes.
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