Payment Gateway

A payment gateway is a merchant service provided by an e-commerce application service provider that authorizes credit card or direct payments processing for e-businesses, online retailers, bricks and clicks, or traditional brick and mortar. The payment gateway may be provided by a bank to its customers, but can be provided by a specialised financial service provider as a separate service, such as a payment service provider.

It is equivalent to a physical POS (point of sale) terminal found in many retail outlets. The vendor account provider is usually a separate company from the payment gateway. Some vendor account providers have their payment gateways. However, most of the companies use 3rd party payment gateways.

The payment service usually has two components:

  • Virtual terminal that can allow the vendor to login securely and enter credit card numbers

  • Connecting to the gateway of the shopping cart via an API to allow real-time processing on the vendor’s website

The payment service can be provided by a bank to its customers. Nevertheless, it can also be provided by a private financial service provider as a separate service such as a payment service provider. However, the website facilitates a payment transaction by transferring information between a payment portal, such as a mobile phone or interactive voice response service, and the front-end processor or receiving bank./span>

Payment Gateway Transaction Processes

When a customer orders a product from a payment service-enabled vendor, the payment service company performs various tasks to process the transaction.

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  • By pressing the “Order” or equivalent button, the customer places an order on the website or perhaps enters their card details using an automated phone answering service.

  • If the order is via a website, the customer’s web browser encrypts the information to be sent between the browser and the merchant’s web server. Among other methods, it can be done through SSL (Secure Socket Layer) encryption. The payment service can allow transaction data to be sent directly from the customer’s browser to the gateway, bypassing the vendor’s systems. This reduces the vendor’s Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliance obligations without redirecting the customer from the website.

  • The vendor then transmits the transaction details to the payment network. This is another (SSL) encrypted connection to the payment server hosted by the payment service.

  • The payment service converts the message from XML to ISO 8583 or a variant message format (the format understood by EFT Keys). It transmits the transaction information to the payment processor used by the vendor’s buyer bank.

  • The payment processor transmits the transaction information to the card issuer (For example Visa / MasterCard / American Express). If a MasterCard is used, the card provider also acts as the issuing bank. After that, it gives a direct approved or denied response to the payment service. Otherwise, the card-issuing directs the transaction to the bank that issued the correct card.

White label payment gateway

Some payment service systems offer white label services that allow payment service providers, e-commerce platforms, ISOs, vendors or purchasing banks to brand the payment service technology entirely on their own. It means that PSPs or other third parties can have an end-to-end user experience without imposing payment processing and additional risk management and compliance responsibility to the company.

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