Sage Pay aids ecommerce start ups

Sage Pay, the online payment processor, has announced that it will be helping start-up ecommerce businesses by supporting the 2011 Getting British Business Online Campaign. Businesses that sign up to the Getting British Business Online

initiative will be given a free .co.uk web address that will be automatically registered in Google’s search engine and a new ‘wizard’ tool that will help them create a website in 20minutes. Sage Pay will also extend its 3 months free processing offer to enable small businesses to take payments from their customers.

Simon Black, Managing Director of Sage Pay said: “The first year for any online business is crucial in terms of whether or not they will become a successful enterprise. We’re seeing more and more ecommerce businesses going bust year on year because they aren’t getting the fundamentals right. On the other hand the businesses that are getting them right are reaping the benefits. We want to provide the tools and encouragement to help the next generation of e-commerce traders maximise their conversion rates and become leaders in their industry.”

Providing a simple and safe checkout is the crux of any online business and one of the tools that Sage Pay is able to provide to e-commerce businesses to facilitate this is a recently launched Token system. The Token system allows e-tailers to offer their customers a single click checkout whilst fully supporting 3D Secure and card compliance standards.

Sage Pay believes this functionality will help e-tailers dramatically improve the overall customer experience and drive customer loyalty, without compromising security.

Sage says the new service brings convenient one-click payments, previously the domain of larger companies, within reach of businesses of all sizes. Its head of research and development Mat Peck, said: “For years now, PCI DSS has presented a real challenge for online merchants and retailers, as they attempt to balance the complexities of providing an easy to use and inherently positive user experience, with the limitations imposed by strict regulation. Now we can help them do both, and at a relatively low cost to their business.”

It’s the second year Sage Pay have worked on this initiative – last year they worked alongside BT and Google amongst others to aid small online start ups.