What is a payment gateway and how does it work?

At physical places, such as a convenience store, shopping mall etc. we are all familiar with using card terminals, so the best way to think of a payment gateway is as a 'virtual' card machine for your website. These are often known to as a PSP (Payment Service Processor) or an e-commerce payment gateway.

What is a payment gateway and how does it work?

A payment gateway is a method that validates the credit card information of customer safely, guaranteeing that funds are accessible for you to get paid. It builds the link to complete the transaction between your website or payment terminal and an acquirer. For making any form of payment transactions, payment gateways are essential.

By encrypting confidential payment information, such as the card number, payment gateways protect card details to ensure that information exchanged between the customer, retailer and purchaser remains secure.

Commonly, there are 3 types of payment gateways:

Redirects can provide an option, for example, for a PayPal payment.

It becomes a "Redirect" when the gateway sends a buyer to a PayPal payment page to manage the full transaction (i.e. processing and paying).

For the retailer, this has the value of convenience. In order to incorporate the convenience and security of a major network like PayPal, a small business may use a Redirect gateway, but the process also means limited flexibility for the retailer and a second step for customers.

Consider PayCEC's payment gateway: the front-end checkout will take place on your platform, but the processing of payments happens via the back-end of the payment gateway.

There are some pros to managing your payments this way, including convenience, similar to redirected payment gateways.

But you won't be capable of monitoring the whole experience of the buyers via the payment gateway, as is the case above.

Large-scale organizations prefer to use fully managed on-site payments on their own servers. On behalf of the client, the checkout and payment processing all work in your system.

The benefits are now reversed: you will have more power, but you will also have more responsibility.

Every variable includes if you manage payments on-site.

Since retail has a cart abandonment rate of about 75 per cent, drastic changes in the bottom line can be generated by any adjustment you can make to the shopping experience.

For any retailer working with a large volume of sales, this is especially crucial. It is important that you consider your choices as well as your obligations when you manage your payments on-site.

Read more: How many types of payment gateway

How does a Payment Gateway work?

A payment gateway does the following steps in the process of online payments through credit and debit cards:

Collection - When the buyer enters to the checkout on the website to submit their credit card information, the payment gateway will either provide the payment page or transmit the information to it securely.

Transfer - The payment gateway securely transmits the credit card information and transaction details of the buyer to the payment processor (A.K.A. acquirer, acquiring bank, or merchant bank) (A.K.A. acquirer, acquiring bank, or merchant bank).

Authorization - After this data finds its way through the card network and to the issuing bank of the buyer, the transaction authorization will find it's way back to the payment gateway, where you and your buyer are notified whether or not the transaction is successful.

Read more:

• One payment gateway for multiple websites
• Online Payment Gateway
• What is E-commerce? E-commerce payment system and platform
• Multi currency payment gateway & multi currency merchant account
• The best payment gateway for WordPress websites

About PayCEC

PayCEC was established in response to the growing need of businesses to accept online payments more quickly and easily. PayCEC is an official trademark in Europe, certified by EUIPO (European Union Intellectual Property Office). We honour to bring the exclusive online payment gateway with high-quality features and top security systems for global merchants. PayCEC provides a unique payment gateway which accepts various types of currency, provides full tools of management and fraud protection to build up successful businesses. Join us, become one of our merchants and experience the greatness of sustainable online business.