Best payment processor to avoid shopping cart abandonment?

Hello,
just wondering is somebody has run some tests how effective different ways
of charging users for subscription services are. What I mean by that is, is the user
more likely to sign up if the credit card form in on the site, or redirected to
another website like Paypal or 2CO. And if they are redirected to another site
like Paypal, 2CO, Moneybookers, Nochex, Google Checkout, which one is least likely
to suffer from “shopping cart abandonment”? Not much point to go for a cheaper
payment processor and then make less money due problems while the user checks out.
Thanks for any help!

As a general principle taking payments directly yields the best conversion rate as the experience is constant and thus there’s no confusion during the process.

The exception to this, and it is increasingly major, is small / tech products where PayPal has become not just common but preferred for speed and a sense of “third party” investment. In these cases, the issue is insuring that you aren’t losing base [direct] conversions while gaining new customers [increased pool]. The best way to do this is of course by testing both options alone and together.

2checkout and Google Checkout are far smaller players and therefore yield less results in this way with their own respective tradeoffs.

If you integrate one of PayPal’s online payment solutions you can customise the PP pages the user is redirected to to include at least your company logo and background colour to give the PP pages the “look and feel” of your website. With this, the redirection from your site to PP is relatively seamless to the user and they will then have the option to use their own credit card or PP account to make the online payment.

When the payment is complete PP can automatically redirect the user back to a “thank you” page on your own website from which the user can continue browsing/shopping.