Online Payments Make It Easy For Your Customers to Buy

Accepting credit cards can help increase revenue and speed up cash flow. The fact is most banks can provide you with the merchant account needed to accept credit card payments online, but beyond that, they have little to do with the process.

You will need the following to accept credit cards on your website:

(1) an electronic shopping cart system

(2) a payment gateway service

(3) a credit card processor and

(4)an internet merchant account issued by a bank or other financial institution or service bureau.

Here's how online credit card processing works.

(1) Your customer submits his credit card information at checkout on your website.

(2) The shopping cart software sends the transaction to the gateway.

(3) The gateway routes the information to the processor.

(4) The processor contacts the bank that issued the customer's credit card.

(5) The issuing bank approves or declines the transaction.

(6) The processor routes the result back to the gateway who then passes the result back to the website shopping cart system. The entire process is done electronically and takes seconds to complete.

Payment Gateway Service:

The payment gateway service comes into play when a customer submits their credit card information to the webpage form. Think of the gateway service as the middleman in the process. The website's shopping cart checkout system electronically submits the credit card to the gateway service that then routes the information to the processor for approval.Credit Card Processor: The credit card processor is an electronic data center that processes the credit card transactions coming from the gateway company, ensures that the charge is valid, then settles the funds in your merchant account.Internet Merchant Account: An Internet merchant account is a bank or account in which funds from online sales are deposited by the processor. Merchant accounts are usually issued by banks that are associated with the major credit card services like Visa and MasterCard.

Shopping Cart System. To accept online payments you must have what's called a "shopping cart system" that allows the customer to select and purchase products from your website. A shopping cart system typically consists of three components: the product catalog, the shopping cart, and the checkout/payment system. The product catalog is the component that displays the items you have for sale on the website. The shopping cart system is the component that allows your customers to select products by clicking to "add items to cart," and the checkout/payment system is the component that allows the customer to complete the checkout process and pay for their purchase with a credit card


The most important thing to remember when setting up an online payment system is this: online it's all about security and privacy. Online credit card processing is much less susceptible to fraud and abuse than of those scenarios.

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