So, you wish to accept payments online?
When it comes to setting up a merchant account on your on-line business, the process may be downproper confusing. There’s so much more to it than simply figuring out a merchant bank that may provide you with decent rates and nominal fees. After all, you will wish to shop around for good rates when it comes to your merchant bank however negotiating rates is just a small part of the commercial transaction cycle that you will need to consider.
There are several key parts and providers that make up the ecommerce process. Merchant accounts, payment gateways, shopping carts, processors, it all starts to get pretty difficult when you look at the entire players involved. Let’s recap the basic on-line payment process:
A buyer visits your ecommerce website.
Buyer decides to make a purchase.
The choice is added to the shopping cart.
The client provides personal and financial particulars during the check out process which might be recorded via a safe form.
Details submitted from the form are transmitted to a payment gateway service, which is separate from the shopping cart technology. The gateway service securely routes the knowledge by way of the relevant monetary networks, including your merchant bank.
If the transaction is successful, the shoppers’ credit card account is debited and your merchant account is credited.
Once all funds have cleared, you’re then able to transfer money to your unusual enterprise checking account.
So, where do you start?
Well, you possibly can shop around for the assorted providers required and as soon as you’ve got established your providers, hope that they will all integrate with each other which is unlikely (for instance, your payment gateway will must be compatible with your shopping cart and work with your merchant account). Or, you could find a comprehensive web payment answer that can work with you to deal with all of your merchant account needs. A superb, ecommerce provider will offer shopping cart, payment gateway and merchant account providers and the most effective providers are usually not tied to a single bank but can work with several banks allowing them to negotiate the most effective rates for you based mostly on your online business type and transaction history.
When shopping for the precise provider, ensure that you find a PCI DSS compliant provider. PCI or the Payment Card Industry has standards for handling sensitive credit card data and in case you and your provider can not prove compliance, chances are you’ll endure additional charges imposed by the merchant bank or you may lose the ability to take credit card payment on your website altogether.
What’s a Payment Gateway?
Most merchants understand the function and purpose of the shopping cart, the merchant bank and the credit card processing company but, what concerning the payment gateway? A payment gateway is a separate part that serves as an intermediary between the shopping cart and the financial networks concerned with the transaction. The gateway is essentially a virtual model of your POS terminal. It checks for validity, encrypts transaction details, ensures that data is being sent to the proper destination after which decrypts the responses which are sent back to the shopping cart. The process is all very seamless and your buyer would never directly interact with the gateway itself, only the shopping cart.