Your Guide to Finding the Best Payment Gateway for Small Business in Canada

May 13, 2025
3 minutes Read
Trying to determine the best payment gateway for small business in Canada? This guide will help you make an evaluation plan.
Your Guide to Finding the Best Payment Gateway for Small Business in Canada

How to Choose the Best Payment Gateway for Small Business in Canada

As a Canadian small business, a payment gateway could be the investment that puts you into the not-so-small business category. That can happen if your payment gateway can expand the number of payment methods you accept. Keep reading to find out how, and how to factor this into finding the best payment gateway for small business in Canada.

With the right payment gateway, your Canadian business could become a global business overnight simply by offering more ways to pay. You’ll see that injection of over a billion new potential customers play out in a few ways.

This is the first of three reasons to think about a payment gateway that can accept more payment methods. Over a million people have come to Canada in the past two and a half years. Offering new friends and neighbours a familiar payment methods makes it easier for them on day one. They’ll feel seen. They’ll spread the word of your store through their new communities. And they’ll never forget that you were there for them.

If your store caters to the tourist market, giving your customers the option to pay in their currency makes it easier for them to choose you over your competitors, and much easier to recommend you to other travellers. Maybe you’ll be featured on travel blogs around the world. How’s that for free advertising?

More than half of customers will abandon a purchase if they can’t use their preferred payment methods. What a terrible way to lose a sale — right at the end. It’s like fumbling at the goal line. It doesn’t have to happen.

Anything that makes it easier to work with you is a checkmark you want next to your name when you’re being considered for a global contract. One way is to save your potential client hassle by accepting a payment method they already know and use.

Payment Gateway for small business in Canada: Barista holding an OTT Pay Smart POS Terminal while a customer uses their smartphone to pay

Beyond whether or not to prioritize an expansion of the payment methods you accept, other considerations are worth making time to think about when deciding on the best payment gateway in Canada for your small business.

Some charge a small flat fee per transaction. Others charge a small percentage of each transaction. The one you want will depend on whether you run a “sell a million things for a dollar each” or a “sell one thing for a million dollars each” kind of small business.

If the payment gateway you choose can white label their hardware and technology, you can brand all of it with your logo and colours. And you can leave your customers with the right impression at the moment of payment, which will hopefully guide them back to you at a later date.

As cybercriminals and other bad actors get more sophisticated, protecting your money (and your customers’ money) is more of a priority every day. Reputable payment gateways in Canada comply by the PCI DSS compliance standard, but ask how your short-listed payment gateways can protect your small business in Canada and beyond.

One-third of Canadian businesses are investing to improve their customer experiences. A popular way of doing that is through an omnichannel strategy that streamlines the customer experience so it’s equally seamless online, in-store and through a QR code.

best payment gateway for Small business owner holding an OTT Pay Smart POS Terminal while a customer uses their smartphone to pay

With OTT Pay and the new All-in-One smart terminal, you’ll be able to accept 12 different payment methods online, in-store and through QR codes:

  • Visa
  • MasterCard
  • Interac
  • Apple Pay
  • Google Pay
  • Alipay
  • WeChat Pay
  • American Express
  • Discover Card
  • Diner’s Club Card
  • JCB
  • UnionPay Card

If you’re ready to take your small business to the next level, open yourself up to the world with OTT Pay.