What You Need To Know About Payment Gateways
If you want to build an e-commerce store to sell your goods or services then chances are you will need a Payment Gateway. A Payment Gateway is a virtual credit card machine. It securely connects an e-commerce website to your payment processor so that online payments can be authorized, processed and settled.
The first thing to know about a Payment Gateways is that it will not work without a Merchant Account. The Payment Gateway only captures a customer’s payment card information such as cardholder name, account number, CVV number, and address, and sends it in a secure method to the payment processor. A Merchant Account is an account you setup with a Payment Processor to actually authorize, process and settle the payment transaction.
The second thing to know is that a Payment Gateway needs to be integrated with the shopping cart software you will be using on your website. When selecting a Payment Gateway it is important to check with your shopping cart software vendor to make sure its compatible.
Another thing to consider is how easy it will be to install or integrate with your shopping cart software. Most gateways provide two options for integration. The first method is known as a Hosted Checkout, which requires the least amount of programming knowledge. With this method you create a checkout page that is hosted on the Smoke Shop Shopping Cart Payment Gateway’s servers. The major benefits to this integration method are that you do not need to install an SSL Certificate on your website and your PCI Compliance requirements will be reduced. The major drawback is that you do not have the ability to completely customize the checkout page
The second integration method is known as a Web Service API. This method allows you to completely customize the checkout experience by using an Application Programming Interface (API). An API is a set of programming instructions that allows you to create a customized checkout page. API’s are written in many different programming languages such as PHP and ASP.net to allow ease of integration.
Below is a list of other things to consider when evaluating a Payment Gateway:
- Will it allow you to process phone orders via a Virtual Terminal?
- What fraud screening filters are available?
- Is it compliant with PCI DSS requirements?
- Can you accept online check payments?
- Will it let you to setup a recurring payment schedule for both fixed and variable amounts?
- Does it offer encryption and tokenization of card data to avoid the risk of any data breach?
- Will it allow you to seamlessly integrate PayPal payments?
- Can you accept Gift Card payments?
- Will it process Level II/III transactions?
- Can it process multi-currency transactions?
- Can you customize receipts?
- Does it have soft descriptors so you can add more information to customers’ statements?
- Will it integrate with iPhone/iPod devices?
- Can you setup a test store environment?
- What is the historical up time for the payment gateway?