Over the last decade e-commerce, or electronic commerce, which is buying or selling products and services through the Internet, has been rapidly growing. Nowadays it’s a booming industry, as it was estimated e-commerce sales worldwide reached almost $1.5 trillion in 2014 and shall increase to $1.7 in 2015.
E-commerce is equally attractive both to customers and merchants. Customers choose it for its convenience, as they can see a variety of goods and services on the screens of their devices, compare them and choose the most reasonable and competitive prices without even leaving their offices or houses, while merchants prefer this way of trading in order to considerably reduce the operating cost and reach out to a larger pool of customers worldwide. E-commerce provides merchants with the ability to take their business anywhere on the planet through the Internet. The number of websites accepting popular payment methods is also up.
Nowadays purchasing goods and services on the Internet through multiple payment service providers has already become essential, today it can be done easily and safely. E-commerce payment systems have become incredibly popular due to the widespread use of the internet-based shopping and banking. Payment service providers accept payments electronically by managing online transactions between sellers and buyers, they connect the participants of trading process.
Payment systems mainly make money for charging commissions on transactions, whether fixed or variable. And there are also many other ways to make money for a service provider, while dealing with merchants in terms of marketing. Many payment systems offer multiple ways of promoting your brand through channels available to them whether through directories, banners on their web-sites, e-mail blasting or putting merchants' logo directly in profiles of their customers.
While being a payment service provider, you build a bridge between a customer and a merchant, so that they could interact freely with one another, while you get your profit at this time. There are lots of businesses operating on the Internet, and thus a payment service provider gets great business opportunities to acquire customers and merchants operating on various markets, build your own brand and go global.