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Payment Gateway

What does a payment gateway do?

A payment gateway connects the website to the credit card processing network. The payment gateway is the equivalent of a credit card terminal in a retail store. The payment gateway takes the credit card information which is typed in and does some fraud checking and sends it off to processing for approval of the transaction. An approval notice is sent back indicated the transaction can proceed.

A payment gateway is usually provided with your merchant account if you informed the merchant account provider you will be doing ecommerce sales. If you are simply going to be processing transactions there is not too much to setup on the payment gateway. If you plan on using some of the other options there can be a lot of different settings to change. Be sure to get help from the company if you need it, it is better than losing money.

What to look for in a payment gateway

To tell you the truth there are only two things you really need to look for in a payment gateway. Those two things are price and reliability. If you find a gateway which is reliable, meaning secure, trustworthy, etc, and is in the right price range then for most people this is all you should need. As mentioned eariler, there are some other features and things you can look for in a payment gateway if you are going to need them, but for the average small business merchant all you really needs is an affordable, reliable payment gateway.

Payment Gateway Features

For those of you who are looking for more from your payment gateway than just processing credit card transactions from your website and want a more hands-on approach, then here are some of the major features to look for in a payment gateway.
Features Description
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