Payment Gateway

The customer uses the shopping cart before being directed to the payment gateway. The main purpose of the shopping cart is to allow the customer to choose all the items they want to buy from the web store. When the customer checks out, the shopping cart calculates the totals, adds the shipping and tax charges and then collects the customer’s billing and shipping information. The payment gateway then captures the customer’s card activity (transaction), encrypts the information about the transaction, sends the encrypted information to the credit card processor and returns a notification to the customer of whether or not the transaction has been approved.

The seamless process of using the shopping card to send the customers transactions to the payment gateway is crucial to ensuring that your customers do not interact directly with the gateway and that the connection between the shopping cart and the gateway is secure. There are things any online internet payment gateway should perform when a customer tries to make a purchase. These are:

Authorization

Before any amount is deducted from a credit card, the credit card issuer must first authorize the transaction. The internet payment gateway always checks if the card is approved. The payment gateway provides the secure link between the customer, the web store and the credit card processor. It also ensures that the authorization process is carried out in about 2 seconds- this is very important because it saves time (which is the main reason why most people shop online anyway.)

Settling

At the end of each day, the payment gateway collects all the information about day’s transactions and sends them to the web store’s bank as a single batch. This is to ensure that the web store is paid for all online sales. This is called Settling. After settling, it usually takes about 2 days for the money to be transferred (electronically) in to the web store’s bank account.

Reporting

This service allows ecommerce business to view, print or downloads records regarding their online transactions for review purposes. Some internet payment gateways are compatible with accounting packages such as QuickBooks that makes reconciling and accounting a breeze.

Unlimited users

The best part about online payment gateways is that they allow an unlimited number of users to make purchases at the same time. The payment gateway also accepts many people making purchases from different location with different card processors to make purchases at the same time.

Fraud Screening

Because there is a rise in online fraudulent activities, payment gateways offer various fraud-screening tools. Some of these screening tools include CVV and address verification. The payment gateways also store credit card information reducing the liability that may arise from ecommerce web sites storing card information.

The above are only a few of the things that can be provided by online payment gateways. Like many other aspects of an ecommerce business, it is important to choose the best ecommerce solutions provider that will ensure they provide you with the best payment gateway option that will ensure that your business is secure. This is what we do at NextGen eBiz.

At NextGen eBiz, we not only develop the best ecommerce websites, we ensure that you have the best payment gateway options for your site so it is secure and looks professional. If you would like more information on payment gateways or any other ecommerce related subjects then please feel free to contact us.