The checkout is where most online sales are lost, and usually for a boring reason: the customer did not see a payment method they trust. The fix is not a better button — it is offering the method that is normal in your market.
Start with what your customers already use
Sharpam ships with eleven gateways so you can connect the one that is standard where you sell: Stripe and PayPal across North America and Europe, Paystack and Flutterwave across Africa, Razorpay, PhonePe and Cashfree in India, SSLCommerz in Bangladesh, iyzico in Türkiye, PayFast in South Africa and Mercado Pago across Latin America. You connect your own merchant account, so settlements go directly to your bank.
You do not need all of them. One gateway your customers recognise plus one fallback is a better checkout than six logos nobody has heard of.
Do not skip manual bank transfer
In a lot of markets, transfer is the default and card is the exception. Manual bank transfer shows your account details at checkout, the customer pays from their banking app, and you mark the order paid once it lands. It costs you nothing in gateway fees and removes the "I do not want to type my card number" objection entirely.
The one discipline it needs is a habit: check pending orders twice a day so nobody waits.
Cash on delivery, carefully
Cash on delivery converts well and cancels often. If you offer it, ask for a phone number, confirm the order by message before dispatch, and consider limiting it to your own delivery area or to repeat customers.
Get the details right
- Show the total early. Delivery cost revealed at the last step is the single most common reason a cart is abandoned.
- Price in the local currency. Making someone convert in their head is friction you can delete.
- Send a confirmation. An automatic email or WhatsApp message after payment prevents most "did my order go through?" enquiries.
- Publish a refund policy. Buyers look for it before a first purchase, and gateways ask for it during review.
Test with your own money
Before you announce the shop, place a real order for the cheapest item, pay for it, and follow it through to refund. Ten minutes of that finds the broken delivery rule, the wrong currency and the missing confirmation email — all the things you would otherwise discover through an annoyed customer.