Payment Gateway: Software that connects a shopping cart or virtual terminal to your credit card processor.
Your website communicates with your customers and your processor. When your customer attempts to make a purchase on your site, a third party is responsible for transmitting sensitive credit card data to your processor to obtain approval. This is what a payment gateway does.
An authorization is made in the amount of the sale. The processor reports back to the payment gateway if there are enough funds (approval) or if there are not enough funds (decline) or if there is an error – for example, an incorrect expiration date. Once your website knows the status of the charge, it can issue the appropriate result. Examples:
- The account was successful. Here is proof of your purchase
- The account was declined.
- The information provided was incorrect. Please correct the information
How to choose a gateway
There are hundreds of payment gateways. Sometimes banks have their own, sort of “home spun” payment gateways that they use. With each transaction, there’s a fee charged by the payment gateway.
The standard, as in most reliable, seasoned, and accepted payment gateway is Authorize.net
From a development point of view, Authorize.net has the best interface and API. It communicates well with just about every shopping cart, e-commerce system, and tons of other software programs and services.
When a shopping cart software developer creates shopping cart software, they know that they will have to use a payment gateway. Because Authorize.net is so common and prolific, it’s the usual choice to integrate into shopping carts. Its popularity and simplicity make it the clear choice over other systems.
There are several advantages to using Authorize.net
- Easy to integrate and widely accepted ( saving money on development)
- Has a test mode to make sure all is working before going “live”.
- Has a robust suite of free options that can be used to automate processes
- Automated Recurring Billing (ARB)
- Customer Information Manager (CIM)
- Advanced Fraud Detection Suite (AFDS)
- Top-notch fraud protection, and user-controlled settings to customize the system
- High customer satisfaction and excellent support
- PCI compliant when storing credit card info (this is big!) Lowers risk of data breaches
- Support for Apple Pay, Apple’s recently announced in-app payment feature
- mPOS mobile application with encrypted card reader capability
- Blended account functionality — use one account to process CNP and CP transactions
In sticking with our philosophy of not wasting time or money, we always use Authorize.net on our sites, and when you are able, you should too. Always ask if the technology you are looking to purchase integrates with the worlds most popular gateway.
You can get an authorize.net account right away by clicking here
