by USDAgov

Question by kumaran: What is Internet Payment Gateway?
An internet payment gateway is the most important part of any online business. What an internet payment gateway enables is a way for your site to process credit and debit card payments. One is a gateway which processes the credit card numbers and the second method is an internet payment gateway which collects the numbers and necessary information with you needing to run the numbers yourself on an offline credit card machine. Many companies, banks and websites offer this service online.

Best answer:

Answer by Sky Lin
An online Internet payment gateway allows you to process credit card orders from your website in real time. This way, the customer knows immediately whether or not their credit card was approved.

A shopping cart is usually used before the payment gateway. This function allows your customers to pick and choose the various items they want to purchase from your website, including options such as size, color, etc. At checkout the shopping cart totals the items, adds tax and shipping and collects the customers shipping and billing information.

The payment gateway captures the credit card transaction, encrypts the transaction information, routes it to the credit card processor and then returns either an approval or a decline notice.

This is a seamless process and your customer does not directly interact with the payment gateway as data is forwarded to the gateway via your shopping cart and a secure connection.

There are three vital things that an online payment gateway does when a customer attempts to make a purchase from your website using a credit card or a debit check card. These include authorization, settling, and reporting.

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