Spreading the risks over various payment methods

29 jan 2012 - The patience of both consumers and webshops was severely tried again this week. ING's online banking broke down on as many as four occasions.

This is not acceptable for webshops. It leads to an immediate loss of turnover. It is highly likely that online retailers suffered millions of euros in damages this week, as ING is no minor player in the payments market. In total ING has 4.7 million customers who use internet banking and log into ING's servers between 1 and 1.2 million times a day.

It is not the first time that iDEAL has malfunctioned. Thuiswinkel.org has on numerous occasions drawn the attention of the banks and the licence-holder Currence to the limited availability of iDEAL. These breakdowns are occurring increasingly in 'prime time': at moments that masses of consumers are shopping online. It is not only ING that is having difficulty keeping iDEAL 'up and running'. During the past year consumers and online retailers were also the victims of breakdowns of such banks as the Rabobank and ABN AMRO.

Thuiswinkel.org, the organisation responsible for promoting the rights of webshops, announced this week that they would not accept this any longer. We want to enter into a performance contract with the Dutch banks and Currence. We will be starting a dialogue with them about this as soon as possible.

One thing that these breakdowns have made clear to us in any case: it would be wise for webshops to spread their risks around in the field of payments. Making use only of iDEAL, quite apart from the fact that it is prohibited, is a risky business. Retailers would do well to offer other methods of payment such as PayPal, TNT's Check Pay and credit cards as means of making payments. Spreading the risks is sensible not only with a view to possible breakdowns. It is also commercially interesting. The more possibilities potential customers of a webshop are offered, the greater the chance is that they will actually commit themselves to purchasing a product or service.

For webshops it can be extremely interesting to do business with Payment Service Providers (PSP). These are businesses that offer webshops various methods of payment in a single package. After all, offering various methods of payment takes a lot of organising, particularly for smaller webshops.