Payment Gateways: All You Need to Know

More and more people prefer to shop from the comfort of their home in these days, instead of visiting a physical store to buy services or things. This is quite a natural characteristic of modern life. Online shopping allows customers to purchase anything without the limitations of stock availability in a brick and motor store. This is a golden opportunity for merchants to increase their sales and reach of their products and services. To make it possible smoothly and safely, you need to consider payment gateway integration.

 

What is a Payment Gateway? 

Payment gateway providers facilitate payment authorisation. It is software application that connects your website to the bank so that the customers can pay you right there without any hassle. The service can be used by eCommerce websites, other service providers whose customers pay online, any organisation that collects money online or even physical store that accepts payment through alternative methods. The payment gateway acts as an electronic cash register. It is the final step of sales process on an eCommerce website, without which you will not be able to securely charge your products or services.

 

The Function of Payment Gateway 

For customer payment gateways is a simple and straight forward process in online payment platforms, select and add the product or service to cart, enter the financial information, and checkout. However, it is a complex process behind the scenes. When a customer places an order on online payment platforms, and enter the payment information, an online transaction will be processed as ‘card-not-present’. Payment gateway will encrypt data between user’s browser and the server of the retailer. Authorisation request occurs when the payment processor gets an approval from the financial institution to proceed with the transaction. As the payment gateway authorises the transaction, it allows the website and interface to proceed with the next action. Encryption, authorisation request and fulfilment are the security features.

 

Payment Gateway vs. Payment Processors

 Typically, a payment processor is a third-party company that is appointed by the merchant to deal with the financial transactions done in online payment platforms. Payment processors analyse and transmit the data to issuing bank on transactions. Payment gateways do this work and are a fast, economic and convenient way to accept payment on transactions, without creating a merchant’s account. As a merchant, you can sign-up with a payment gateway provider and start the payment processing that day.

 

Types of Payment Gateways

When the payment gateway takes the customer to a payment page to complete the transaction, it is called redirects. The advantage of this system is simplicity. A small merchant can incorporate redirect-gateway to their page. However, the merchant has less control over the process and has two steps to complete the payment. Payment off-site option allows front end transactions, but the actual process behind is through the gateway. The onsite payment method allows the transactions to be done on their own website.