There's a steady rise in the number of consumers opting for online payments in 2019, with mobile payments seeing an exponential increase. As per a study done by Price Waterhouse Cooper, consumers choosing to purchase through mobile payments have doubled in less than a decade - from 7% to 17%.

If you're an online business owner, it's vital to offer your customers an array of payment options to stay competitive in your niche market. The greater the variety of payment options available to a customer, the higher the customer satisfaction rate. Another added advantage of having multiple payment options is it decreases the time to get payments. Many vendor sites benefit and save time by receiving payments through direct debits from bank accounts or secure phone payments.

If as a business owner, you're wondering how to accept payments online, here are a few options.

Offer an online payment gateway: Creating an easy-to-fill payment form will assist customers to pay directly. Repeat customers can set up an account with their payment information securely stored for repeat payments when shopping at your site. Another option is to outsource the online payment gateway feature to specialist companies dealing in online payment services. This will cover all aspects, from handling the payment form and providing secure payment to securing customer data. The form can also be tailor-made in accord with your brand. Giving customers the facility of an online payment form makes it feasible to receive payments via e-check, debit or credit card.

Online Card Payment: Giving the customer the facility to make payments via a debit or credit card is the simplest way of accepting online payments. If you intend to integrate this feature on your website, you'll need to choose between a holding account held by an intermediary or setting up your personal dedicated business account. Both of these have very different processes, so you need to do your homework and find which is best suited for your business. The top debit cards are Mastercard and Visa, while American Express, Mastercard, and Visa are among the most popular credit cards used across the world.

E-check Through ACH Processing: Another popular way of accepting payments is by directly debiting a customer's bank account through the use of e-check (electronic check). For this, the customer provides the information on the regular check, i.e. name, amount, account number, routing, and authorization, using an online form for payments or an interface. This enables the payment to get processed electronically without any need of a regular paper check. The ACH process is done under the guidelines of the National Automated Clearing House Association with transaction fees (generally lower than credit cards). A bonus is it's swifter and a more secure way to receive payments than getting a regular check via standard mail.

Mobile Payment: This is one of the fastest growing payment modes, and comes in the form of entering a credit card number using a card with a chip or swiping on a variety of mobile devices. The payment is authorized after the customer keys in the PIN. A receipt gets generated immediately.