Best Payment Method/Platform to use in Switzerland when you start your business?

[fini1]

Hello! 

I'm a bit confused with so many payment options. I would like an advice in what's the best payment method when you start your business in Switzerland, and you don't expect many sales at the beginning. 

I was decided to start offering only PayPal, as it's simpler. But then it's not that popular in Switzerland. And then I was considering Stripe or Datatrans, but also I find it too expensive for the beginning. What's your opinion about it? 

Thank you! 

Josefina

[Victor]

Hi @fini1,

There is no one right way to set your store up in terms of choosing payment methods, as what's best for one store might not be best for others. Choosing which gateways to use and which payment methods to offer can depend on what you sell, where you sell, and who you're selling to. One piece of advice is that, in general, offering more than one payment method is often preferable as it gives your customers more choice at checkout—some customers may prefer one method of payment over another, so giving them multiple choices can help reduce cart abandonment.

Merchants in Switzerland can choose from a wide variety of different payment gateways to use on the Shopify store. It's worth noting that you do not just have to choose one, as many serve different purposes. For example, you could use gateways such as Authorize.net, Stripe or 2Checkout to process credit card payments from customers, PayPal Express Checkout to allow customers to pay via PayPal, and Bitpay to accept cryptocurrency payments from customers. There is also the option to accept manual payments from customers after checkout, such as bank deposits and cash on delivery. You do not need to offer more than one payment method at checkout, but the option is there for you if you wanted to do so.

All payment gateways will incur some form of processing fee for using their services, and Shopify does also charge transaction fees for payment processing via third-party gateways. My recommendation would be to review the different payment gateway options you have and review their pricing and services, so then you can make an informed decision on what would be best for you and your business. You could also do your own research and view the online stores of other Swiss businesses, head to the checkout, and see which payment options they offer, if only to give you a general idea of what other stores offer.

I hope this helps Josefina, but please let me know if you have further questions.

[fini1]

Thank you very much for your quick answer, Victor! I will look better into all that information that you gave me.

Can you kindly tell me which are the most popular payment gateways that Shopify users from Switzerland use? For selling locally.

[Victor]

Hi @fini1,

No problem at all. I don't have too much in the way of information regarding the most popular payment methods in Switzerland, although I do know that Stripe is one of the more popular gateways in terms of processing credit card payments.

Please bear in mind that for when you're using a gateway to process credit card transactions, the user experience is nearly always the same as this is usually all done via the Shopify checkout, and the customer won't be able to tell which gateway you are using. For this reason I would recommend prioritizing what's best for you and your business, rather than the customer, when choosing a credit card gateway. However, if you want to enable accelerated checkouts such as Apple Pay, you'll need to bear in mind that this option is only available with some credit card gateways (Stripe is one of them).

In terms of what other methods of payments are popular in Switzerland, I was able to find a couple of articles online that talks about this in more detail. Please bear in mind that this information is not coming from Shopify and therefore I cannot verify it's accuracy, but it may help you learn more:

• About Payments
• Paymentwall

I hope this helps but please let me know if you have further questions.

[fini1]

Thank you very much, Victor! 

[Victor]

Hi @fini1,

No problem at all! I'm glad I could help. Please let me know if you have any further questions.