Payment gateways work in conjunction with merchant bank accounts in one of these ways:
- The shopping cart collects credit card information and passes this in a secure way to the payment gateway for processing. The payment gateway processes the transaction and the funds moved by the bank into the seller’s merchant bank account. The buyer’s bank takes the money from the customer’s credit card account. The result of the transaction is sent back to the shopping cart for display to the buyer.
- The shopping cart either passes control to the payment gateway provider’s website, or the transaction is processed behind the checkout and the result passed back to the cart without credit card details being processed by your site (so there is no compliance risk). The secure gateway collects the credit card details from the customer, processes the transaction in real-time and redirects the customer back to the shopping cart website along with information about the result of the transaction.
To use a payment gateway, you will need an Internet Merchant Account with your bank and an account with a payment gateway provider.