iDEAL

 

More and more people buy online – books, holidays, DVDs, music downloads, clothes – you can get just about anything on the Internet these days. To make it easier to pay for online products and services, the Dutch banking community has developed the iDEAL online payment method. iDEAL allows online payments to be made using online banking.

 

What is iDEAL?
iDEAL is a standard payment method for making secure online payments directly between bank accounts. When you offer iDEAL as a payment method in your online store, a direct link is established with the systems of your bank. In other words, this one connection to iDEAL enables any visitor to your site who has access to online banking with ABN AMRO (inclusive previously Fortis Bank NL), ASN Bank, Friesland Bank, ING, Rabobank, SNS Bank, SNS Regiobank en Triodos Bank.
 

How does iDEAL work?
A few simple steps is all it takes for the consumer to pay using iDEAL.

  • At the checkout, your customers simply have to click on the special iDEAL payment button on your website.
  • From a drop-down list, customers then select their own bank, which opens the online banking environment they are familiar with, where they authorise the payment.
  • Within seconds, after the consumer has authorised the payment, the successful payment status will be available to you.
  • As soon as the payment has been authorised, the amount due is debited from the consumer’s account and transferred to your bank account.
  • Since you know that the funds are on their way, you can proceed with shipping immediately. This does not involve any risk for you because your customer cannot reverse the payment.
  • Depending on which bank your customer uses, you will have the payment credited to your account within 1–2 working days.
    Payment by iDEAL is extremely simple. The following demo goes through the online purchase process using iDEAL step by step, from checkout with the shopping cart to payment confirmation.

 

Start Demo


iDEAL is the most frequently offered payment method
iDEAL is accepted at more than 13,000 online stores in the Netherlands, making it by far the most widely accepted payment method for online payment method. Meanwhile 47% of online shoppers paid for their most recent online purchase using iDEAL.
 

Key figures

The number of iDEAL transactions and the number of consumers using iDEAL continue to rise.


  • In 2006 there were more than 4.5 million transactions.
  • In 2007 almost 15 million iDEAL transactions were made.
  • Again in 2008 a sharp rise in the number of transactions was achieved (28 million), an increase of 87%.
  • In 2009 there were more than 45 million transactions, an increase of 63%.

 

More information
For more information about iDEAL, go to www.ideal.nl.