Archive for the 'Payment Gateways' Category
Payment Gateways
A payment gateway is a separate service and acts as an intermediary between the website’s shopping cart and all the financial networks involved with the transaction, including the customers’ credit card issuer and your merchant account.
Think of it as a EFT point-of-sale terminal in cyberspace. It checks for validity, pulls transaction details, ensures they are sent to the correct destination and then decrypts the responses which are sent back to the shopping cart.
This is a seamless process, the customer does not directly interact with the gateway; his/her data is forwarded to the gateway via the shopping cart and a secure (SSL) connection. The shopping cart is configured via “plugins” to send information in a format that is acceptable to the particular gateway. The proper choice of payment gateway is a vital element which will contribute to the success or failure of an online business.