In the competitive landscape of software, staying ahead means mastering your chosen verticals. One crucial aspect is integrating payments seamlessly into your system. However, the task is often daunting due to the intricate nature of embedding and operationalizing payments.
As a software platform embarking on your payment journey, you will face the challenge of creating the best and most secure payment user experience for your customers. The development required and the allocation of resources can appear complex and time-consuming. Yet, it doesn’t have to be.
Partnering with the right payment provider can streamline the process from discovery to implementation, enhancing the end-user experience for your platform. The right provider offers flexible solutions, to crawl, walk, and run depending on where your software platform is in its payments monetization journey. Hosted Payment Pages and Embedded Components are two such tools.
These solutions enable platforms to evolve from their minimum viable product (MVP) to a fully seamless payment experience. This blog will delve into the details of these options, empowering your software platform to navigate its payment journey effectively.
Hosted Payment Pages vs. Embedded Components – What’s the Difference?
- What is a Hosted Payment Page? A Hosted Payment Page is a payment page hosted on a payment provider’s secure URL allowing an entry of payment information from your customers.
- What is an Embedded Component? An Embedded Component is a secure container placed within your software platform’s web experience, which allows for secure entry of your customers’ payment information.
An Overview of Hosted Payment Pages
Using prebuilt options such as Hosted Payment Pages are an easy option for your software platform to offer payments. Many benefits come with choosing the Hosted Payment Page path and there is flexibility for your software platform, including:
- Little to no coding needed: When it comes to Hosted Payment Pages, one of the main benefits for your software platform is that there is little to no coding needed. Hosted Payment Pages allow you to start monetizing payments quickly, securely, and easily. This means if you’re resource-constrained and don’t have available developers or roadmap capacity you can still begin monetizing your payments volume while buying time to build a deeper integration.
- Security and compliance advantages: Via the Hosted Payment Page, the right provider can ensure that no sensitive data/payment information touches your system, greatly reducing the burden of compliance for your software platform.
- Ease of integration and scalability: Hosted Payment Pages and Boarding Links are great starting points for your software platform to accept payments and board customers today while allowing you the ability to build a seamless, payments and boarding experience into your platform over time.
- Customization: There’s a common misconception that Hosted Payment Pages and boarding forms don’t offer any customization. However, the right payment provider can make this available and offer flexible options. For example, it can be as simple as branding your payment pages with your brand’s custom colors, fonts, and logo to give it your own look and feel even if it is still hosted on your payment provider’s URL.
An Overview of Embedded Components
Embedded Components provide a seamless experience to allow your customers to accept payments securely via a JavaScript-based collection and tokenization system embedded within your platform, protecting sensitive data and limiting your PCI Compliance scope.
Similar to the Hosted Payment Page solution outlined above, there are various benefits for software platforms that choose the Embedded Component path for payment acceptance as well as merchant boarding and advanced reporting.
- Seamless and immersed user experience: Embedded Components provide a more native user experience ensuring your customers always stay within your platform reducing customer friction and abandonment.
- Greater control and customization options: Your payment provider will provide you with the Embedded Component, and from there you will have the ability to customize it with all your branding needs to fit your platform’s look and feel. Any additional information you want to include is still available to you.
- Security and compliance: Just like the Hosted Payment Pages, your payment provider should be hosting any payment information and reduce the burden of PCI compliance via the Embedded Component path. They take care of the security, you take care of the UI and branding.
- Development and maintenance considerations: You are in control of anything that involves your Embedded Component, which boosts user experience.
Does Your Payment Provider Offer the Flexibility You Need?
Choosing the right payment provider is crucial for your software platform as you seek flexibility in your payment offering. Here are a few key things to consider when choosing your payment provider as it relates to Hosted Payment Pages vs. Embedded Components:
- Do they offer solutions that allow you to “crawl, walk, or run” depending on your needs? The right payment provider can meet you where you are in your journey and provide flexibility with your implementation. For example, maybe your team wants to get up and running quickly so you decide to start with the Hosted Payment Page solution but eventually would like to graduate to the Embedded Component path. The right payment provider will take on a consultative approach with you and your team from the beginning, assess your software platform’s current stage and needs, and map out the proper development and implementation plan to ensure success.
- Is your payment service provider aligned with your requirements? With the consultative approach, the right provider will have the confidence to recommend the solutions they think are best for your business. At Payabli, our team of payment experts has extensive knowledge of the intricacies of different implementation paths and use cases. While we like to give our Partners full reign of their payment journeys, we are also here to offer best practices and recommendations so that your platform is set up for long-term growth and payment success.
- Security, compliance, user experience, and scalability: As you embed payments into your software platform, you are inherently in scope for PCI compliance by bringing payments into your ecosystem. However, working with a PCI Level 1 certified provider like Payabli, you can reduce this scope by leveraging the security built into Hosted Payment Pages and Embedded Components which will insulate you as the platform from touching any PCI-sensitive card data. This will provide a foundation for a safe and successful launch of your platform.
- Do they offer an “all-in-one” solution and tools for optionality? From Embedded Components and Hosted Pages to a Robust WebApp and No-Code tools, it’s important to make sure you are partnering with a payment provider that provides a holistic offering that spans myriad use cases and features.
For software platforms, integrating seamless payment solutions is paramount. By partnering with a payment provider like Payabli, platforms can streamline the process and enhance user experiences with our API-first approach.
Whether through Hosted Payment Pages or Embedded Components, platforms can swiftly adapt and scale their payments business. The key lies in selecting the right payment service provider, one that aligns with the platform’s needs and champions flexibility.
Ultimately, strategic partnerships pave the way for sustainable growth and success in the ever-evolving realm of software platforms.
Are you interested in learning more?
Speak with our payment experts to learn more about Payabli’s hosted vs. embedded payment solutions and how our team can help get you on the right path.